Breakfast starts the day at a little café called Skyjet located at the ‘top of the hill’ right here in Tionesta. Nice place with average food, not bad at all, just not outstanding.

Our drive is taking us through the Allegheny National Forest and mostly along the Allegheny River. The road twists and turns for quite a long time. We zig and zag, heading toward the western edge of Pennsylvania. Our goal is to stay in rural settings as much as possible as we aim to find the Ohio River somewhere out in front of us.

Countryside ruins hold intrigue as I wonder about the lives that occurred within these walls and consider the lost dreams as the former inhabitants pulled up roots and moved down the road to start over. On the other hand, urban ruins are loaded with the bad feelings of people who may have never had ambitions and were simply beaten down by the system. For me, they are two sides of tragedy but one I never want to witness firsthand as I don’t believe the latter really ever aims for a fresh start.

By the time we reach Oil City, Pennsylvania, it’s time to take a hard left to aim south. The sky is cloudy but does not appear to be threatening us with imminent rain. The humidity is almost overwhelming. Everything in the car is damp, everything we wear is damp, and sweat continuously drips, dampening our hopes of drying out. Our escape from the heat of the Arizona summer has been less than effective, futile even. The next day’s weather report tells us to expect more of the same. Caroline informs us it’s over 120 ‘real’ degrees in Phoenix, not the reported 117 degrees.

Through farms and forests, we crawl along. Finding elderflowers in Eldersville, Pennsylvania, seemed poetic. West of there, we enter West Virginia at a tiny border crossing that apparently doesn’t deserve a Welcome to West Virginia sign. Our first town is Follansbee where we stumble upon a bakery; not much left, though, we leave with a still-hot blackberry pie. Don’t think for a second we left with a slice; we left with the whole thing.

Wellsburg, West Virginia, is a well-maintained, beautiful village kept alive by the steel industry and coal-generated power. Lunch was at a small Main Street restaurant with a great homemade chicken dumpling soup. Their chicken pot pie was the daily special; I went for it while Mom had a Philly cheesesteak. Steel and coal are still alive here, and the town is better for it. Wellsburg is impeccable.

We remain on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River as we meander further south for another hour or two of curves and hills. Passing the south side of Wheeling, we cross over the river, landing in Ohio. More forests and farms dot the landscape along this side of the Ohio River.

It is a slow day of driving for us and by the time we start approaching Belpre, Ohio, we are ready for dinner. I know you must be thinking, “Jeez, these two are eating their way across America.” To an extent, that is true, but since leaving Wellsburg, hours and hours have passed.

We see that Parkersburg, West Virginia, is bigger than Belpre and figure there are better dining options over there. So we pay the toll to cross the bridge and, at the toll booth ask an elderly guy where’s the best place to get catfish. He recommends that we go back up Route 7 over in Ohio, where we just came from, to a place called Catfish Heaven. Great, we make a U-turn that takes a mile to figure out. We pay the toll to return over the bridge and head back up Route 7.

Four or five miles, just as the guy told us. There it is, except it is called Catfish Paradise. I should note I know this is the right place because before committing to this backtracking, I stopped at a 7/11 to ask the cashier for confirmation of the location. I explained that my mom and I wanted some catfish and that the guy at the toll booth told us about Catfish Heaven; she nodded in agreement and confirmed that the place is only 4 or 5 miles north.

We miss the turn but find a middle-of-the-road spot to make a U-turn that was probably only supposed to be used by law enforcement – hey, I’m a tourist! We see fishermen around the roadside little lake and think, wow, this must be a catch-and-eat fresh kind of place. Oh, NO, it’s not! This is not a restaurant. This is a catfish farm with no onsite cook waiting to batter our fresh catch of the day and throw some hot sauce and lemon at us.

I’m sure that this is some kind of joke played on tourists, knowing we wanted fried fish, not swimming fish. Mom is cackling like a chicken; I’m a bit annoyed at wasting the 20 minutes, seventy cents in tolls, and having to listen to Mom bust a gut for the next 10 minutes.

Defeated we decide to skip our hunt for fish and keep on driving, certain we’ll find something soon.

Out on the Ohio Scenic Byway just enjoying the day.

Lucky us as one of our encounters with a local person, had recommended that we leave Highway 7 and take Route 124 instead. We are now on even more rural lands with no services, no hotels, no restaurants, and a detour. Tomato fields, bell peppers, corn, eggplants, chilies, beans, and more tomatoes dot the landscape here near the Ohio River.

The urge to nab a few of the red ripe tomatoes is almost too much to bear, but Mom shoves a heap of guilt on me that this would be stealing. It would be sampling, and there is no one roadside to sell us any. We drive on.

With starvation setting in, we are now wishing we’d grabbed a couple of those catfish that could be turned into sushi instead of facing death. That Bocce Club pizza we bought a few days ago and sat on the backseat for a day or so would come in handy about now, and we’re both certain it would still be great. Dreams of Perry’s ice cream overwhelm us as we cruise through this food desert where the uncertainty of our next meal is torturing us.

Beautiful river scenery and tiny villages go by until we reach Pomeroy, the largest town we have seen in hours. So large is Pomeroy that it has a McDonalds, a KFC, and a Wendy’s. It is the Wild Horse Café, though, that gets our vote for dinner.

We are sitting riverside at sunset for dinner. Our server brings over some tortilla chips with salsa that is surprisingly really good. Waiting on our entrees we have this great view of the glowing clouds reflecting in the Ohio River. Our lodging for the evening is also in Pomeroy at the Meigs Motel. More of the Ohio River awaits us in the morning.