Millies Café – “Go a quarter-mile and turn right at the caution light, go about four miles” are the instructions we use to find breakfast. Nothing on the highway identifies the place. Good thing we arrived on Wednesday, according to the waitress, as on weekends it’s standing room only. If you were to see for yourself how sparse the local population is out here, you’d understand how popular this place is to bring people in from near and far.
Before and after breakfast, we were dealing with somewhat heavy fog, which quickly burned off into a blistering heat combined with humidity conditions, leaving us feeling like we were in a tropical fishbowl. We sweat. The air conditioner vents in the car sweat. The air is sweating. Humidity is a nemesis and absolutely alien to someone who’s been living in that good old Arizona dry heat. Moving around causes each individual pore to sweat in a kind of torture. Seconds later, every square inch of clothing is damp, but it’s so hot that our clothes are not cooled by the breeze or fans blowing air in the car. We are so hot and humid that we start creating our own personal cloud of humidity. I think we will start raining upon ourselves.
The Ohio River Valley in July is not only a nearly unbearable land of humidity but also laden with crops this time of year. From vineyards, corn, beans, and melons to tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, and tobacco, we are taking inventory of a cornucopia of produce here along the river.
Towns come and go, none really stand out. The scenery is definitely the winner here until we make Manchester, Ohio, where we stop at a small winery called Moyer on the Ohio. As they also have a cafe on the premises we use the opportunity to have lunch. Mom also picked up four bottles of Ohio wine, and we were right back on the road.
Our waitress recommended that we cross the river into Maysville, Kentucky, about 20 minutes southwest of the winery. She emphasized that we go to Old Washington in Maysville in particular.
I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to just drive by an abandoned gas station, as there’s something fascinating about these places. My best guess about what the attraction is would be that my imagination conjures the sights and sounds of travelers from the past who are driving somewhere new. Not going to work or school but on a migrant journey following opportunity and chasing new horizons. Without the mass media, we have today, those travelers from a previous age would be venturing into a great unknown where every corner showed them the unexpected.
Those people were fleeing their own uncertainty and inability to deal with particular situations, hoping for a new start elsewhere. When I stopped at a house in ruin, there really wasn’t anything special about the chaos of the place that appeared ransacked following its previous inhabitants abandoning it, but there was one thing that stood out. While everything appears to be turned over the potholder above the stove looks untouched. The person who put that back up on its hook after removing dinner from the oven probably never thought that they’d never use it again.
There are certainly parallels between these rural abandonments and Buffalo, which makes me wonder about what places in America are next.
Great recommendation from the woman at the winery to visit Old Washington. This is where Harriet Beecher Stowe found some of the inspiration to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin after watching a slave auction at the local courthouse back in 1833.
Quite a few old buildings from the 1700s still stand on Old Main Street; I only wish we had more time to visit. The truth is that we had enough time, but the hot weather and humidity were too oppressive for Mom’s comfort, so she waited in the car with the a/c on while I jumped out and grabbed a few photos.
There’s a lot of history in this small town I hope to find again someday in the future, but for now, we are leaving.
Back across the river in Ohio, just before Ripley, we stop to take a photo of a houseboat that is undergoing renovation. Seeing the owner, Mom now has the wherewithal to exit the car. I see how it is; if it’s something my mom wants, she’ll go the extra mile. She asks Bob, the owner of a local upholstery shop, about his labor of love. He’s been working on this aluminum 42-footer for four years now and is almost ready to start putting it back together.
Ripley itself is one of the towns Mom and I swear we must come back to. Sometimes, in the most unlikely of places, the most wonderful surprises await you. Today, it happened multiple times. Driving through Ripley, Mom spots an Easy Step shoe outlet and insists on visiting. Twenty minutes later, with five pairs of shoes and a new purse, she emerges to me, napping in the running car.
A few more miles down the road, and we’re aiming to cross the river back into Kentucky. Our $5 ferry ride has us landing in Augusta, Kentucky, our next amazing surprise location. Not far after leaving Augusta, we are on some of the twistiest roads known to mankind. A light rain starts to fall, but only for a minute before it starts to pummel the earth. Darkness descends in midday, and lightning strikes not more than 300 feet in front of us, making Mom grab my arm so quickly and tightly that I thought I’d jerk the van off the road.
The rain comes and goes while the road continues to twist and turn, zig and zag and we finally return to the road we were supposed to be on. The next stop was at a gas station for the facilities. I ask about a good place for home cooking and the attendant is quick to tell us of Mr. Ed’s in Verona. About 10 miles up the highway and then about 3 miles west, we will find Verona. One wrong turn, and we took the long way down a narrow road, which proved nice for photos but added a few miles to the journey. At the intersection of Mudlick and Glencoe Roads, we see that the girl meant Mr. Herb’s in Verona; there could not be another restaurant in this tiny village.
The food is excellent. The starter is fried green tomatoes; we agree they are the best we have ever had. I ordered the cod, for which they are locally famous, and Mom went for the catfish. For sides, Mom has more fried green tomatoes, and for me, the green beans. Both of our dishes are great, but I would have preferred the catfish. For dessert, we nearly have coronaries before reaching the front door after gobbling down a deep-fried slice of apple pie with ice cream and caramel sauce, an “oh my god!” experience. Feeling like we’re falling behind schedule, although it’s a loose one for sure, we decide on taking the dreaded freeway to shave some time off the driving requirements.
The idea was to beeline it to Madison, Indiana, and then take Highway 56 across the state as we continue in our effort to bypass any major cities and minimize freeway driving. Right, enough energy to go shoe shopping and eat deep-fried apple pie, but it’s too hot, and her feet hurt, so I have to get out and snap a selfie of myself. I should have worn donuts on my shoulders to get my mom to follow me around.
Does that look like Kentucky to you? As far as I could tell, the barge was hauling coal.
In Old Madison, we almost ruined our plans. This place must be one of a small handful of absolutely perfect places in America. I had said Harbor Springs in Michigan would be in the top three, and Monterey, California, would probably be there too; that leaves Madison to round out the list. I’ll have to give this more thought and see just what my top 10 favorite American cities would be. I suppose I would also want to include Canandaigua, New York. While I’m at it, throw in Apalachicola, Florida, so there it is a beginning to my all-time favorite cities in the United States.
We talk of staying the night after spotting a riverside motel that, for only $59, begs us to stay. Our loved ones back home are begging us to return, so we decide it’s better to get a few more miles down the road before calling it a day.
Only 75 more miles were driven before we were too tired to continue. We made it to Paoli, Indiana, but didn’t quite find what we were looking for in accommodations. In French Lick, we stop at the Lane Motel grabbing a nice little room for about $57.