Fifty Plus (50+) - Pics From My Ride This AM

I took a 20-mile ride this AM - Got on the road about 9:30. It was in the low-40's temperature-wise, but little wind. I wore jogging pants over my cycling shorts, a long-sleeve jersey with a fleece pullover over that, and a rain-proof/wind-proof bicycling jacket. I had gloves, one of those headbands that covered my ears, and a rain cover on my helmet to keep the wind out of the vents. This outfit was perfect for the conditions.

My ride took me up along a ridge that overlooks the Ohio River. I am on the Kentucky side, and just downstream of New Richmond, Ohio. Just as the road starts down off of the ridge, there are a couple of houses built on the river-side of the road overlooking the river valley - a million-dollar view, in my opinion. It's so steep that the roof of the houses 50 feet from the road are actually lower than the road. Anyway, I snapped a couple of pictures of the view:

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c354/tpelle/1117070933.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c354/tpelle/1117070932.jpg

In the second picture, just for scale, there's a towboat running upstream near the bank - "running the willows" as they say on the river. He's probably going to move some coal barges to supply the power plants.

From where I'm standing, I'm going to continue down a STEEP grade that ends at Mary Ingles Highway, which runs along the river on the Kentucky side. I'm going to head back West along this road for about 15 miles, then loop back on another road back to my house.

Mary Draper Ingles, for whom the road along the river is named,was the first white person to see this part of the country - although not intentionally. In July of 1855 she was kidnapped from her frontier home at what is today Blacksburg, Virginia by a Shawnee hunting party. Eventually, after having been adopted into the tribe, Mary was able to escape during a salt-gathering expedition near the present-day Big Bone State Park, about 30-miles downstream of Cincinnati, Ohio, and on the Kentucky side of the river. Mary (along with another female captive who eventually died before she made it back to "civilization") returned to her Virginia home by following the Ohio River upstream. She was unable to swim, so each time she encountered a tributary creek or river that was too deep to ford, she had to walk upstream along the tributary until she got to a shallow spot, then return to the main river and continue her journey.

If you're interested, here are a couple of web links to her story:

http://www.blueridgecountry.com/ingles/ingles.html

http://www.aceraft.com/mediapg/medapg13.html

Good pictures, thanks for sharing them. Over 20 years ago I worked at a couple of the power plants farther up the Ohio. I always enjoyed the area and watching the river traffic.

Loved your pictures and your story. It brings a lot of depth to the ride to have a little history. Makes me want to ride there! No snow yet?

Loved your pictures and your story. It brings a lot of depth to the ride to have a little history. Makes me want to ride there! No snow yet?

Nah! We really don't get too much snow (knock on wood). And what we do get usually doesn't stay around for much more than a few days normally - although we have had a few severe winters. Back in 1978 or so this whole area was COVERED in about 8 - 12 inches of solid ice. That stayed around for a while. I was a young pup on the Fire Department then and road the tailboard of a pumper (back in those days you still rode the tailboard) up that very road along the river below where the pictures were taken, and got some mildly-frostbitten fingers from holding on to the rail. In 2004, right before Christmas, we got a foot or so of snow that stayed around for a few weeks. I remember it well because I just bought a new Mustang on December 21, drove it home and parked it in the garage, and it snowed a bunch that night - the Mustang stayed in the garage for about three weeks!

We usually don't start to get REALLY COLD weather until around February.

Are you a mountain biker? Have you ever ridden the Otter Creek Trail or Capital View? Those views make mountain biking almost worth the risk. They are very similar to what you photographed.

Nice pictures, and thanks for the interesting links.

If you're as interested in history, as I am, check out Alan Eckert's work. I've read many of his books and would recommend " That Dark and Bloody River" and "The Frontiersman".

http://www.allaneck.com/b_dark-and-bloody.html

Nice pictures, and thanks for the interesting links.

If you're as interested in history, as I am, check out Alan Eckert's work. I've read many of his books and would recommend " That Dark and Bloody River" and "The Frontiersman".

http://www.allaneck.com/b_dark-and-bloody.html

Yes, I enjoy Eckert's work. A lot of what he writes about took place right in my neighborhood. As a matter of fact, the name of Kentucky is derived from an Indian phrase meaning "dark and bloody ground". It seems that there were large Indian cities in present-day Ohio and Tenessee, but Kentucky, by mutual consent, was a sort of Indian No-Man's-Land used as a hunting preserve. When this area began to be explored by the White settlers, such as Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton, they used the Ohio River as their "highway" of access, and stayed out of Ohio because of the large Indian population. The settlers naturally gravitated to Kentucky, since there were no Indians actually living there. Kentucky actually became a State before Ohio because of this, and the present boundary between Kentucky and Ohio is actually the North bank of the Ohio River. The Ohio River is actually "owned" by Kentucky!

If you ever get a chance to visit it, Big Bone State Park, where Mary made her escape, is an interesting place to see. As far back as the Pleistocene era, about 15000 years ago, animals of all sorts including the wooly mammoths, came to those salt springs to lick the salt from the ground. Because of the marshy soil, many of the animals became mired, and eventually died there. Sabre-tooth tigers preyed on the mammoths that were stuck in the mud and unable to free themselves. At the museum there, they have skeletons and other bones of those animals on display - a mammoth skull is as big as the doghouse of a modern full-size sedan. It used to be that bones of those animals, including the tusks of the mammoths, were just lying around on the surface of the ground there.

I used to work with a guy whose family settled in that area. He showed me an old photo, taken sometime right around the Civil War, of a log cabin with a little creek in front of it. Across the creek was a foot bridge in the shape of an arch, and upon closer inspection it was possible to make out that the foot bridge was made up of mammoth tusks! It looked like something right out of the Flintstones!

He said that, during WW-I, the Government came through and collected all of the bones, tusks, etc. that they could find, and ground them up for the calcium to make fertilizer.

My brother-in-law worked for a company that did paving work, and had several gravel quarries in the region. In his basement he had a piece of a leg bone that he showed me that was over a foot in diameter! He found it in one of the quarries, and threw it in his pickup and took it home, intending to make a coffee table out of it! He said that if you found something like that you just got rid of it - if you reported it the State would shut down the operation and those scientist-types would start excavating your quarry with whisk brooms and toothbrushes! I guess there's still tons of that stuff out there.

I would have loved to get a chunk of mammoth ivory to make into a set of grips for my old .45 pistol!

Nice pictures, and thanks for the interesting links.

If you're as interested in history, as I am, check out Alan Eckert's work. I've read many of his books and would recommend " That Dark and Bloody River" and "The Frontiersman".

http://www.allaneck.com/b_dark-and-bloody.html

Thank's Louis, I think I'll give it a try.

Great pictures. Looks like I need to take a short trip down the interstate and do more riding in that area.

Do you attend any of the Cincinnati Cycling Club events? I saw they started a new ride this year called FORTB (Frontier Ohio River Bike Tour). It had a crossing of the Ohio via ferry. This sounds like a fun ride and one I would like to do next year.

Great pictures. Looks like I need to take a short trip down the interstate and do more riding in that area.

Do you attend any of the Cincinnati Cycling Club events? I saw they started a new ride this year called FORTB (Frontier Ohio River Bike Tour). It had a crossing of the Ohio via ferry. This sounds like a fun ride and one I would like to do next year.

No, I really don't do any club rides. First off, I'm a 55 year old Clyde, and I figure I'd just slow everyone else down. My riding style is to go as slow as I want, and if I want to stop and look at something, take a short rest and a drink from my water bottle, etc. I do.

Also (and this may be an unpopular opinion here) but I also have an aversion to riding in those big groups - it really aggravates the other users of the road. I find, however, when riding by myself, that drivers are courteous to a single rider and give me plenty of room when they pass. It's when a whole group is riding two-abreast and taking the whole lane, making it difficult to pass, that motorists get aggravated.....and when I'm on a 20-pound bicycle I'd prefer to not aggravate the driver of a 4000-pound pickup truck.

I bet it was the Anderson Ferry that they crossed. That's West of town and near the airport. I'm East of town, more opposite New Richmond, Ohio. There's another ferry that crosses the river at Augusta, Kentucky. That's about 30 or 40 miles East of where I live. Augusta is a neat old river town that also happens to be the home town of George Clooney - and, for us geezers, Rosemary Clooney (George's aunt). I actually have it in mind next summer to ride to Augusta. You would take Mary Ingles Highway (KY Rt. 8) East along the river the whole way. Since they built the AA-Highway, Mary Ingles has absolutely no traffic on it anymore.

If you're a movie buff, back in the mid-70's when they filmed the TV mini-series "Centennial", they used Augusta to represent St. Louis during the pioneer era.

In the second picture, just for scale, there's a towboat running upstream near the bank - "running the willows" as they say on the river. [/URL]

Adding just a quick Geomorphology Lesson:

When a river meanders, the inside of the bend is called the "slip off slope" and features slower water speed and considerably shallower depths. The far outside of the bend is called the "cut bank" and features faster current but deeper water. [Opinion: I suspect hugging the edge of the cut bank mitigates the current speed a little bit but still offers water deep enough to navigate.]

I bet it was the Anderson Ferry that they crossed. That's West of town and near the airport. I'm East of town, more opposite New Richmond, Ohio. There's another ferry that crosses the river at Augusta, Kentucky. That's about 30 or 40 miles East of where I live. Augusta is a neat old river town that also happens to be the home town of George Clooney - and, for us geezers, Rosemary Clooney (George's aunt). I actually have it in mind next summer to ride to Augusta. You would take Mary Ingles Highway (KY Rt. 8) East along the river the whole way. Since they built the AA-Highway, Mary Ingles has absolutely no traffic on it anymore.

If you're a movie buff, back in the mid-70's when they filmed the TV mini-series "Centennial", they used Augusta to represent St. Louis during the pioneer era.

It was probably the ferry at Augusta as they start the event in Georgetown. I've heard nothing but good comments about this years ride and they plan to make a two day event next year.

Adding just a quick Geomorphology Lesson:

When a river meanders, the inside of the bend is called the "slip off slope" and features slower water speed and considerably shallower depths. The far outside of the bend is called the "cut bank" and features faster current but deeper water. [Opinion: I suspect hugging the edge of the cut bank mitigates the current speed a little bit but still offers water deep enough to navigate.]

Yep! "Running the willows"! It's a little hard to tell from the pictures, but the river does make a broad curve there.

This is an interesting area for the river. Years ago - about 40 or so - there used to be dams on the Ohio every few miles. They only changed the water level about 5 feet or so, and had very small locks that were a major impediment to modern river navigation - that is, tow boats pushing strings of barges. The locks and dams were designed back in the steamboat era, and for a modern tow to go through they would have to break the tow down and send it through in "chunks", the re-assemble it on the other side of the dam.

About 40 or so years ago, they replaced all these "little" dams with big high-lift locks and dams. They went from having about 50 little dams to just two big ones 99 miles apart! Where the picture is taken, just a mile or so downstream, is the site of one of the little dams which subsequently had been demolished. The buildings on shore have been taken over by Thomas More College as a marine-biology research center where they monitor aquatic life, water cleanliness, etc.

The change in water level when the new dams went into operation was drastic! Before the new dams, I remember as a kid, just a few miles downstream of where the picture was taken, my older brothers had part interest in a summer cabin right next to the river. I remember being able to walk out in the river, nearly halfway across, and the water wouldn't get up to my waist. This was true right up to the dredged channel, but then one more step would put you in over your head! It was hoot to wade out there and watch the tows going by - it seemed like you would be close enough to almost touch them, and the bow wave would wash you off your feet!

I read once that there is more commercial freight tonnage carried on the Ohio River annually than goes through the Panama Canal.