Hello everyone! Thanksgiving Week is upon us here in the United States, and turkeys are being rounded up by the thousands. Pecan and pumpkin pies are going in the oven and families are preparing for long drives to relatives houses around the country. It is our busiest travel weekend of the year, so please be safe on the roads out there. It’s also a distinctly American holiday, which I’ve always been fascinated by. As I mentioned at Easter, many Americans don’t give off a lot of hints as to their ethnic background until you visit them at Christmas or Easter and then you’ll see old family recipes they don’t even consider as anything but “what we’ve always eaten”. Of course millions of Americans don’t celebrate these Christian holidays at all, celebrating their own religion’s holidays instead. This is am amazing time to visit these Americans’ homes and learn their traditions. It’s really only the 4th of July and Thanksgiving we celebrate all together with some form of consensus on the menu. So Happy Thanksgiving America. Eat lots and get extra exercise this week to make up for it. Watch some football and throw the ball with your kids. Enjoy your family and friends and ask them how they are and if they’re happy and healthy, laugh out loud and hug often while you are together. Leave the politics and B.S. off the menu for a day and just enjoy each other and our special American day.
I’ve spent lots of Thanksgivings on the road, so I’m ready for it. Two that were particularly memorable had me fixing a traditional American Thanksgiving meal for tour groups of 13 people. One was around a campfire in Key Largo in Florida and the other was in a ski lodge in Stowe, Vermont. In the first instance my group was out snorkeling all day and in the second they were skiing. Wherever you are this weekend, I hope it’s where you want to be.
I will be here in Georgia! I have made my way into the Peach State and had a fabulous first week in Georgia’s Far North. Most people probably don’t associate mountains and Georgia, but they certainly go together well. My week has been spent out in the woods, enjoying cool but sunny weather in Georgia’s State Parks and natural areas. It’s been an amazing week exploring this region and has really whet my appetite for the rest of my stay here.
Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world. So far, over 400 miles of cave have been explored and mapped and nobody can really say how much further the cave goes. It is generally a dry cave, so it’s not known for beautiful and elaborate formations (with some notable exceptions), but it’s enormous rooms and passageways make it a magical place to visit. It is a National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and part of the International Biosphere Reserve.
In addition to the vast underground cave system, the park also protects 52,000 acres of beautiful Kentucky forest surrounding the Green River. Miles and miles of trails crisscross the park providing ample opportunities for exploration above ground as well…
Hillcrest Avenue in Louisville, Kentucky takes Halloween seriously. Very seriously. They have become known around town as the place to go to see Halloween decorations. I was really glad to get this tip and be able to go and photograph their wonderful displays. If you are travelling through Louisville between now and the end of the month, or you ever find yourself there in October, definitely head over to Hillcrest for a spooktacular time! Enjoy these photos from my visit!
Despite its name, Old Louisville began as a suburb of Louisville sometime around 1870, nearly a century after the city’s founding. Old Louisville covers a 48 block area with one of the largest concentrations of Victorian architecture in the country. Unique to this time period and style, most of the houses in the neighborhood are brick or stone which has kept them in pretty good shape over the years. I loved wandering the neighborhood there and taking these photos. You will see some are of entire houses, while others are of specific details which caught my eye and others still are of neighborhood streets, parks and fountains. It’s a lovely place for a stroll and well worth a visit if you are ever in Louisville.
Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery was dedicated in 1848 and is the final resting place for over 120,000 people. During the Victorian Era and in a time before city parks were as prevalent as they are today, “garden cemeteries” were often designed and promoted for recreational activities. People would stroll down the winding lanes and maybe have a picnic by the lake. I like this idea and have always seen beautiful cemeteries as a nice place to walk and think and ponder life and death, a place to consider and draw from generations of people who came before us. Funerary art and statues are remarkable and often overlooked as a true art form. I spent several hours in Cave Hill over two visits, neither under the best of conditions for photography, but it was beautiful nonetheless. You will see photos of some of the famous people buried there like Colonel Harland Sanders, Muhammad Ali and Louisville founder George Rogers Clark. There are also lesser known people like Harry L. Collins, who was the official magician of Frito-Lay and Nicola Marschall who designed the official flag and uniforms of the Confederacy. Cave Hill is also a National Cemetery with graves for both Union and Confederate war veterans. It is a beautiful place to visit and was high on my list of sites I wanted to see in Louisville. I hope you enjoy my photos from Cave Hill.
I love covered bridges as I think they hark back to a different time in this country. Because people always ask, covered bridges are covered to protect the main structure of the bridge from the weather. It is far less expensive to replace a roof than the bridge itself. Covered bridges really came into their own in the second decade of the eighteen hundreds, and at one time over 400 could be found all over Kentucky. Today, only 13 remain with three of them in Fleming County. Goddard Bridge is beautiful, and with the Goddard United Methodist church behind it, makes for some cool photos. Ringo’s Mill Bridge was built right after the Civil War, and while it’s not open to vehicular traffic anymore it’s still in pretty good shape. When I visited, they were preparing it for a wedding over the weekend which would probably be really pretty. The Grange City Bridge is also closed to traffic, but sits quietly off to the side where it has for over a hundred years. I enjoyed tracking down these three old bridges and taking these photos. I hope you enjoy them too
Starting in 1998, artist Scott Hagan set out to paint the Ohio Bicentennial logo on 88 historic barns, one in every county of the state. He completed the project in 2002 and when the bicentennial celebration began the following year, every county had its “Bicentennial Barn” proudly on display. You can still see many of these barns as you travel around the state today. Unfortunately I was only able to get these four photos in my travels around the Buckeye State, but every time I saw a Bicentennial Barn, it made me smile from ear to ear.
I really love these three photos from my time in Ohio. The top one is from Cincinnati, the middle one from Cleveland and the bottom one I took in Toledo. I love the vertical lines in them and how they have elements of old and new, modern and industrial. To me they speak of what I saw throughout my stay in the Buckeye State: a place holding onto its past but moving boldly towards the future.
After the end of the Civil War, many of Toledo’s wealthiest residents began moving out of downtown and building houses “out in the woods”. This area developed over the next 50 years into the West End neighborhood, now called the Old West End. While it has ebbed and flowed over the years like most old neighborhoods, today it stands as one of the largest collections of intact Late Victorian Era homes in the country. It is a remarkable architectural gem, a living museum and a friendly and welcoming place for a visit. While I was walking around taking photos for this post, I met two long-time residents, Jim and Carol Kutsche, who you will see pictured at the bottom in front of their beautiful home. We sat on their porch for the better part of an hour talking about Toledo and the Old West End. The first day I visited the weather wasn’t in my favor, and the second the light was being difficult, but these photos still came out okay. It was too remarkable a neighborhood to pass by though, and I think you will definitely agree that many of these houses are real gems, even some which are in severe disrepair. If you are in Toledo, you must make time for a stroll around the beautiful Old West End.
The Ohio State Reformatory was built in Mansfield, Ohio starting in 1886. Designed by Levi Scofield, the reformatory is a combination of three different architectural styles: Victorian Gothic, Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne. The prison opened its doors in 1896 to 150 inmates, but at its peak it housed 5,235. It closed permanently in 1990 and was slated for demolition before the producers of the film The Shawshank Redemption decided it would be the perfect setting for their film. I love Shawshank and remember reading the novella it’s based on long before the movie came out. It is one of the very few movies which lives up to the book it was based on in my opinion. While all of the outdoor scenes were filmed on location at the Ohio State Reformatory, many of the inside scenes, including the cell-block, were built as a set in a warehouse in Mansfield. The OSR has also been the filming location for other movies like Tango and Cash and Air Force One - the pictures of Lenin and Stalin you see below were placed for the gulag scenes in the latter. I loved visiting this prison for its actual history and for its Hollywood history. I hope you enjoy these photos from my visit.
Holmes County, Ohio is home to over 10% of the world’s Amish population. The first Amish settlers arrived in the region in 1809 along Sugar and Walnut creeks, and today the area is home to over 35,000 members of the Amish community. Holmes County is also home to a large Mennonite population, who are similar to the Amish in their religious beliefs, but socially are more accepting of modern conveniences like cars and electricity. This area is mostly agricultural, but there are some small to medium sized towns as well. Visiting Amish Country in Ohio was similar to my experience doing so in Pennsylvania. There is great curiosity about the Amish which brings many visitors to the area, but in reality the Amish are busy working on their farms and would probably prefer to be left to their work. This leaves other people scrambling to scoop up those tourist dollars with things like the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock (or Dutch Wonderland Amusement Park in Pennsylvania - nothing is more Amish than a good roller coaster) and can create a Disney-like atmosphere. You can definitely get some wonderful bread and cheese in these regions and also some delicious baked goods. I also really enjoyed visiting the Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center in Millersburg. There is a fascinating Cyclorama there which tells the entire history of the Amish and Mennonite religions and how they evolved over time. They also have a wonderful video which explains the key differences between the Amish and the Mennonites. Both point out that in many ways the Amish and Mennonites are like anyone else - they have marital issues and rebellious teenagers too. But they also point out that because their lives are simple with all of their basic needs met, they don’t long for material goods and are more likely to feel satisfied than those of us who live in a modern world of mass consumerism. I can certainly agree with that...
Stan Hywet is the one-time home of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company co-founder F.A. Seiberling and his wife Gertrude. The Seiberlings started plans for Stan Hywet in 1912 and construction continued until 1915 when the house was completed. Cleveland architect Charles S. Schneider designed the house in the Tudor Revival style, and the completed home covered 64,500 feet and has 65 rooms, 23 bathrooms and 23 fireplaces. When the Seiberlings passed away, Stan Hywet passed down to their children who opened the doors for tours to the general public in 1957. Because of this continuity, the house is remarkably intact with all original furniture, artwork and many household items like sheets and clothing. Stan Hywet is an Old English term for “stone quarry”, one of the most prominent natural features on the grounds which was later turned into a lagoon for swimming. The estate is located just a few miles from downtown Akron, a town which Goodyear helped turn into the “rubber capital of the world”. I loved my visit to Stan Hywet and would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting the area. It is a beautiful home and is beautifully appointed, but it also feels lived in. I chose a guided tour when I was there which was definitely worth the extra $4 on top of the admission price of $15. The sun was really bright and intense during my visit which didn’t help my photos, but I think these will give you a good idea of what the house and grounds look like. I hope you enjoy them.
