Day 2: Friday, June 29, 2007

Hey campers! We're on day 2. You are having to read this backwards but hopefully you are getting the hang of it.

We woke up and went down for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We were introdued to another local tradition as part of our breakfast. The "goetta" pronounced "getta." You order it as part of your breakfast. It looks like a potato patty but it is really made of a mixture of oatmeal, ground pork and who knows! It tastes a little like corned beef hash only gamier. I liked it. It came with eggs and toast like a usual breakfast. You won't find goetta in your supermarket. You can only find it in this little part of the midwest. Pretty cool, huh?

The rest of our day in Cincinnati included a quick trip across teh Ohio River to a totally different state--Kentucky! We drove around and looked in on a couple of old churches and neat old neighborhoods. We also walked along the Ohio River and looked across at the skyline of Cincinnati. From our vantage point we could see the Cincinnati Reds baseball park and the Bengals football stadium.

Next we hopped back in the car and drove back over to the Ohio side of the river. Cool, huh? Two states divided by a river. During the days of slavery the Kentucky side was a slave state and the Ohio side was a free state, so all a slave need do is cross that river and they were free. Of course it was a lot harder than that and we visited an amazing museum along the banks of the Ohio River to find out just how difficult it was. It was the National Underground Railroad and Freedom Museum, one of the best museums I have ever visited. I wish we could take a fieldtrip here so you could see it for yourself. Here are a couple of photos I took while there.

Talked with some wonderful museum docents, walked through exhibits and saw films and slave re-enactments. All incredibly done. But our day was far from over. We needed to get back on the highway and head for our next stop and our next state--Indiana.

As we left Cincinnati we made that other stop at Putz's ice cream and split an ice cream cone of their delicious creamy yellow soft serve. It cooled us off too as the humidity began to rise in the hottest time of the day. We don't have to deal with the problems of humidity here in the northwest. We can have a pretty high humidity but because the temperature is not high we don't really feel the humidity. But in the midwest where teh temperatures can reach into the 90's and the humidity 90%, it is easy to feel pretty miserable some days. You feel the seat dripping down your back and just want to get out of it and into an air conditioned space. Fortunately, our car was air conditioned and so were our hotel rooms so we were pretty comfortable most of the time.

While stopped getting gas I noticed a White Castle hamburger place nearby. Northwesterner's may not know about White Castle becasue we don't have then out here. They are mostly in the midwest but they are a chain. They have also been around many years. White Castle is famous out there. I have never had a White Castle hamburger so naturally I wanted to try one. We went in and I saw immediately taht they were very small. I mean small. A couple of bits and it is gone. So some people will buy a bag of them, like 10 and eat them all. They are pretty small. Still, I only bought 4 and split them with my wife. They are pretty simple, a very thin patty, a few onions and mustard and catsup, cheese is extra.

On we went and eventually arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana, home of the Indianapolis 500! Before checking in to our hotel we stopped at the highly regarded road food stop called Shapiro's Deli and shared a pastrami sandwich, and sides of cole slaw, a potato latke and their famous macaroni and cheese. I am a huge fan of pastrami and the gold standard for pastrami to me is Katz's in New York City. This was pretty good! Our day ended having visited 3 states--Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Whew!