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Cleveland → Columbus → Gallipolis 276 mi (444.2 km) |
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Let’s hit the road, everyone!
Today, Danielle and I are headed out of Cleveland to explore more neat sites in the heart of the Buckeye State! There are rumors of a storm brewing, so we’ll see just how much exploration we’ll be able to do. Let’s go!
Our first stop was as somber as the clouds overhead. It was a memorial of broken Olympic rings dedicated to David Berger, a US-born Israeli weightlifter who was one of the 11 athletes murdered by terrorist group, Black September, at the 1972 Olympic Summer Games in Munich! He had been pursuing a law career in Tel Aviv and had just been eliminated from his first Olympic competition. President Nixon had his body flown home on Air Force One, and he was buried in Mayfield Cemetery, about eight miles from where the monument, designed by David E. Davis, now stands.
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It was a sad start to the day, which made me reflect back on my visit to Israel and the West Bank, back in May. To keep from being sad all day, we’d have to stop somewhere a little cheesier, a place like Grandpa’s Cheesebarn in Ashland! Founded in 1978 by “Grandma & Grandpa” Baum, this place still draws a crowd every morning at opening because it is full of free cheese samples from blueberry cheddar to fire-roasted Carolina Reaper cheese, plus dips, spice mixes, and all kinds of goodies like smoked maple syrup! It was well worth a turn about the shop!
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Danielle insisted we stop next door at Sweetie’s Chocolates so I could try a real buckeye, which is a ball of peanut butter fudge dipped in chocolate to look like the nut that gives Ohio its nickname! It was pretty darn tasty, so tasty, in fact, that I was bouncing up and down in the passenger seat all the way to our next destination!
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That stop, highly recommended by Danielle, was Field of Corn (with Osage Orange Trees), a cluster of 109 concrete ears of corn constructed by Malcolm Cochran in 1994! Built over the former farm plot of Samuel Frantz and arranged like a cemetery, this field of giant corn is a memorial of sorts to the city of Dublin’s disappearing farm culture! For our purposes, it was a fun place to take some photos before the sky opened up and the thunder roared!
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Rain splashed all around us the entire time we traveled between Dublin and Columbus, the capital of the Buckeye State, but luckily for us both, it settled down just as we arrived at the Ohio Statehouse! Designed in Greek Revival style and built of Columbus limestone, this statehouse was half built by prison labor and often went long periods with no construction taking place at all! In fact, between 1840 and 1848, the basement was filled with dirt, and Capitol Square was used as a pasture!
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Not far from the statehouse, we found ourselves on the Scioto Mile, named by the westward-bound Shawnee for deer hair they found floating in the river! For that reason, artist Terry Allen proposed adding some deer sculptures along the Scioto River! It was all part of the city’s 10-year revitalization program between 2003 and 2013 to install as much art as possible and draw more visitors!
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It was a controversial project, since some of the proposed poses were awfully risqué! But, no one fought very hard, and all three deer of the “Scioto Lounge” got approved for $281,000! In any case, they sure made for some picturesque views of the capital city on the river!
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The storm returned as we motored south to our next stop near Chillicothe, Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, home to mysterious mounds left by folks whose real name we may never know! Today, we call them the Hopewell people after Captain Mordecai Hopewell, owner of the farm where the first huge excavations took place in 1891!
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We stopped first at a spot called Mound City, with 23 mounds that were mostly used for burials. It’s hard to know exactly how big this site was or what the mounds looked like when they were built because Mound City was used as an army training facility called Camp Sherman during World War I. Most of the site was irreparably damaged.
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I wanted to take more photos of these amazing mounds, but the site is both a place of worship and a cemetery, and taking photos inside is a big no-no for me. I was left to marvel at the mysteries buried under the soil: a wooden altar burned, buried, and gifted with finely crafted objects. Who they were and what they believed awaited the dead may well be buried with them!
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We still had a little daylight left, and the clouds were lightening up enough to be very pleasant, so we decided to explore one more site within the park’s jurisdiction: Hopeton Earthworks. That meant tramping along a path through a hay field, not what Danielle had envisioned as a good time, but full of lovely lighting in the stormy evening!
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The Hopeton Earthworks have barely survived as an indentation after years of farming wore them down. There was a huge 1,050-foot circle overlapping a square, and two of the square’s walls were aligned with the sunset on the winter solstice! The walls were built with yellow clay on the insides and red clay on the outsides, but no one is sure why!
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Left to our musings, we traipsed back to the car and wondered about Hopewell the whole way to Gallipolis on the bank of the Ohio River. After the surprising discovery that our reservation at the Quality Inn wasn’t until next week, we were lucky enough to get a room that night anyway. It was a good thing too, because we’ve got even more miles to cover, and legends to uncover, tomorrow!
Hope you’re well!
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Total Ground Covered: 347 mi (558.5 km) |
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