Louisville & Cincinnati 2022 [part two]

[For part one click here] [From travelogue email sent at 10:04 p.m.] Saturday, March 26: Cincinnati Just like we did with Indianapolis, with our day trip to Cincinnati, I ordered all of my intended points of interest from south to north, so we would be as close to already headed back south—or in this instance, southwest—toward Louisville by the time we were finished. This made even more sense with Cincinnati, as the final destinations were actually in Northern Kentucky suburbs, across the Ohio River from the city. In the case of Cincinnati, however, even the northernmost stop was just adjacent to Downtown to the north: Over-the-Rhine, billed as "one of the largest, most intact urban historic districts in the United States." It covers over 362 acres, dates back to an initial influx of German immigrants in the 1840s, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and after decades of dereliction and poverty, has been the more recent subject of revitalization and gentrification. The neighborhood's name is a reference to the Miami and Erie Canal that once connected Lake Erie to the Ohio River, once called the "Rhine of Ohio" but officially abandoned in 1913 after a historic flood finished the job of its steady decline in the latter half of the 19th century due to the advent of railroads lessening the use of a water route. I rather wish I had known this last weekend, but I literally only learned while doing the bit of research needed for this very paragraph that an attempt was made in the 1920s to convert the bed of the canal into a Downtown subway, the lack of funds for which prevented completion. The remnants of it that exist today comprise the nation's largest abandoned subway. Anyway, all of that is just a brief overview of what is clearly a rich history of this neighborhood, which I put on my list mostly because it tended to be included in any "Cincinnati In One Day" web pages I found in preparation for visiting. I found a place to park the rental car—surprisingly easily finding street parking—and almost immediately noticed the city's wonderful public art. This giant mural of a little girl wound up making one of my very favorite photos I got the entire weekend, which I took while we walked to the more specific destination we were headed for inside of Over-the-Rhine:

Findlay Market, which is located roughly a mile north of Downtown, is Cincinnati's equivalent to Seattle's Pike Place Market. In fact, it is notably older, being the "oldest continuously operated public market" in the entire state of Ohio, founded in 1852 (Pike Place opened in 1907). In the above photo, you can see Barbara at lower right (long gray hair), headed toward the north entrance. Beyond the two huge words that make up the FINDLAY MARKET sign, and the buildings to which they are affixed, is a long, narrow strip of market shops running perpendicular, which we walked from one end to the other through—the crowds in there actually kind of nuts. I decided to spend $2 on a cookie (just throwing my cash into the local economy!) and settled on a chocolate chip cookie so thick and soft and delicious I now regret never having taken a picture of it.

Barbara and I looked on a map posted just outside Findlay Market of the entire Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and decided we would walk the half a mile or so to what was labeled as Washington Park, which, aside from giving the slight impression of New York's Central Park with its near-ish views of downtown high-rises, as a park, was just . . . fine. But, my favorite thing I saw there, standing across the street to the west, was this huge, beautiful building. Upon closer inspection we discovered it to be the Cincinnati Music Hall, built in 1878.

Once we reached the Cincinnati Music Hall and decided to walk back the way we came, probably missing a lot of interesting stuff in the neighborhood we just didn't realize was around or close by, we began losing interest in the area and decided to move on to the next thing on my planned list. But then, the next place we went to wasn't on my list at all—because when we reached the car, we noticed houses high on a large hill behind us, and we both commented on what great views of the city they must have. I figured there must be a way to get up there and see said view, and when I opened up my Maps app, I found a park called Bellevue Hill Park, which I then looked up and found photos of city views! Once again, bizarrely, this park was labeled on the online map as "permanently closed," but we decided to drive up there to see what we could see anyway. GPS guided me as always, and when we got there, the entrance was totally unobscured, and we weren't even the only other people up there just to take in the view. I got several great pictures, including some taken through the pair of binoculars I was eternally grateful I'd had the wherewithal to pack for this trip.

This photo represents the next two destinations combined: first, Fountain Square, a literal public square in Downtown that is Cincinnati's equivalent to Indianapolis's Monument Square, just with far less grandeur to it. (Indianapolis has its own Fountain Square, which is a neighborhood outside of Downtown—though it does also have its own literal fountain—whereas Fountain Square in Cincinnati is that city's primary public gathering space.) The centerpiece fountain, Tyler Davidson Fountain, was built in 1871, and its water motif is in homage to the Ohio River. And second, much more prominently seen in the above photo even though it's technically in the background, is Carew Tower, the 49-story, 574-foot, art deco (a style I love) skyscraper that was Cincinnati's tallest building for an incredibly long time—from its completion in 1930 until the construction of the Great American Tower in 2010, which actually has a lower roof at 495 feet but is topped with a "crown" that takes its official height to 665 feet (cheaters!—I mean, at least this isn't just a spindly spire). Carew Tower has an observation deck on its top floor, which, again, was listed online as "temporarily closed." After the delightful surprise of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument observation deck in Indianapolis the day before, I dared to get my hopes up, and told Barbara I wanted to go and see if it was actually open, and if it was, I wanted to go up. Barbara, who had chosen to wear her winter boots that are apparently one size too large due to the forecast of quite cold weather—the high in Cincinnati on Saturday was all of 40°F, and there were actually occasional light snow flurries there that day—had already noted that the boots were giving her blisters, after that mile walk in Over-the-Rhine. So, she said she would just stay in the car, after I found a place to park closer to Carew Tower and I went inside on my own to check it out. Predictably, the observation deck was "closed until further notice." I still very much enjoyed spending a few minutes wandering around the bottom two floors of the building, checking out its art deco design, and noting that all but one of the many shops in there were closed. The one exception was a Cincinnati souvenir shop on the second floor with about three shoppers in it.

I decided to make our last stop in Ohio proper—but not in Greater Cincinnati—our lunch stop, another place I had found when looking up local restaurants with city views. I found this clearly very local tavern called, appropriately enough, City View Tavern. Their website no longer works because it still requires Flash, but Yelp works just as well; in fact that was where I discovered that their menu includes a full page of meat free choices. That said, our experience there started off a little dicey. We walked in, found the space to be surprisingly quite small, and still very empty: one group of friends just nearing the end of their time having drinks at the bar; the man only later made clear to be the cook sitting at the end of the bar nearest the kitchen; and one woman bartender, who chatted with the patrons for several minutes, walking back and forth to and from the kitchen to get ice twice, never once even looking in Barbara's and my direction. We were beginning to think she was deliberately ignoring us and starting to discuss whether we should just leave and find another place—something we had already had to do in Louisville my first night there on Thursday, when we went to a pizza place near my hotel, and stood for probably ten minutes by the "Please Wait to be Seated" sign without a single sign of an employee, either at the host podium or even attending any of the other diners. But, then the lady finally addressed us, and took our orders, and told us it would take 15 to 20 minutes. That was when the guy got up from his seat at the bar and went into the kitchen. I had a veggie burger that was . . . fine. Barbara, though not a vegetarian so this kind of surprised me, ordered a vegetarian Reuben, which impressed her so much it turned her negative first impression of the place right around. I was just happy to get the best view yet of the city.
"Northern Kentucky" We got back into the car, and then headed for the bridge back across the Ohio River—as the next destination I had in mind, I wanted to access from that side. in the suburb of Newport, Kentucky. And, while I was searching for that next destination, which my phone's map GPS clearly did not have positioned correctly, we happened upon this very cool, huge bell. (For scale, note that Barbara can be seen in the above photo, standing inside the metal structure, at lower left.) I only discovered when researching for tags I put on my photos on Flickr that it's a 12-foot by 12-foot "World Peace Bell," billed as "the world's largest free swinging bell."

Then, what turned out to be my favorite thing from the day in Cincinnati: the Purple People Bridge, a half-mile pedestrian bridge that spans the Ohio River between Newport, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio. Side note: am I crazy, or does this thing actually look blue? Anyway, it was first built as a railroad crossing in 1872, then was rebuilt, on its original but widened piers, in 1897. It was restored as a pedestrian bridge in 2003, with separate, self-contained crossings—one wide (seen clearly here), and one quite narrow, between the wider pedestrian space and further bridge superstructure elements on its eastern side.

I walked nearly to the Cincinnati side, far enough to turn around and walk back on the narrow path, getting a fun video clip along the way. Also: they sure seemed desperate to get people to rent their bridge for events. I passed several signs like the one shown here.

Barbara, for her part, once again remained in the car, not being up for taking another mile-long walk with blistering feet. She didn't seem to mind waiting, at least, while this time I really did kind of take my time—including, after getting back to the Newport side, walking a bit around "Newport On the Levee," a commercial complex I had found both in searches for "Cincinnati In One Day" as well as best views of Cincinnati. Seen here are reservable "igloos" at Kon-Tiki's Fire Lounge. But, the most interesting thing I encountered at Newport on the Levee was the stairs down to quite close to the southern banks of the Ohio River, where there were the crumbling remnants of what clearly had once been a road. What happened there? What river flood presumably caused that? I have tried my damnedest to figure that one out and have come up empty, aside from the Ohio River flood of 1937, but these pieces of concrete don't look old enough to have been a part of that.
Sunday, March 27: Louisville The last full day of the trip, Sunday, was reserved for Louisville itself—and the best candidate I found for a restaurant with a city view, Copper & Kings Rooftop Bar & Restaurant, where I made reservations for lunch at noon. Why their website doesn't prominently feature photos of this view, which is spectacular even from just the third floor, I'll never know. But! The entire complex structure, largely built of shipping containers and also housing a distillery for brandy, gin and absinthe, was something both Barbara and I found to be very cool—in spite of Barbara having been sober for the past 30 years. Hey, they have a full menu!

In fact, in spite of the menu's incredibly limited vegetarian options—which I already knew going in; I intended to make due for the sake of this view—both Barbara and I ordered the "Patatas Bravas," which was so delicious it turned out to be the best meal I had the entire trip. And, with the waitress's quite open stamp of approval in support of a drink she said was "so good," I also had the one warm cocktail they had available: "Happiness Is a Warm Toddy," made of American Brandy, Curaçao, Earl Grey concentrate, brown sugar, and lemon in hot water. It was notably tastier even than I expected. I also love this "portrait mode" shot I took of it, unfortunately only after I already drank half of it.

Then, the one place Barbara specifically asked me to take her: Falls of the Ohio State Park, in Clarksville, Indiana—again across the Ohio River, this time again across from Louisville. The city skyline can barely be seen in the distance in the above photo, beyond the bridge, and beyond Barbara walking along an actual pedestrian walkway down toward the riverbank, in the middle of a bunch of tree trunks from what, again, presumably were deposited there from some flood. I should have thought to ask an employee about this inside the Interpretive Center. It's just that we spent only a few minutes in there after we agreed we didn't see any need to pay the $9 fee to go inside and see all the exhibits. The park itself outside was interesting enough. Speaking of which, something I find rather interesting: the state line through Louisville is not in the center of the Ohio River, as you might expect. It actually runs along the northern side of the river, giving the river in its entirety to Kentucky—as well as, according to Google Maps at least, much of the land area of the park, which you might otherwise have assumed all of to be Clarksville, Indiana. Apparently this has to do with border decisions from colonial times—challenged by Indiana multiple times, but never changed.

Inside the Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center, there is a mammoth skeleton. (The park also includes fossil beds.) I have to give Barbara credit for this shot, as she was the one who, standing under it, discovered that from this angle it looked rather like a giant insect. There are no falls at Falls of the Ohio State Park, by the way. There used to be, in the eighteenth century, although apparently even then the "falls" were closer to rapids, which lowered the elevation of the Ohio River by 26 feet over two miles, most of which was later covered up by the McAlpine Locks and Dam, constructed in 1830. The Falls of the Ohio is also where Lewis and Clark met, and shook hands, in an apparent gesture seen as the start of their expedition.

After the Falls of the Ohio, Barbara had another favor to ask: if I would drive her out to the Home Depot, where she hoped to find some fasteners for bolts to a table she needed to finish putting together in her apartment. The Home Depot didn't have what she needed, but we wound up relatively close to another place she was interested in seeing, at the suggestion of a neighbor friend in her apartment building: another cemetery. This one Cave Hill Cemetery, which I only learned after arriving there is the final resting place of Muhammad Ali. I was charmed by these tiny plastic boxing gloves left on his giant, horizontal gravestone.

  Barbara had downloaded a map of the cemetery online and was looking at it on her phone, and when she mentioned other notable people buried there, I decided I definitely wanted to see the grave site of one Patty Smith Hill, the woman who wrote "Happy Birthday." It took us a kind of ridiculous amount of time to locate her grave, based on the map labeled with lettered sections and a web page I found giving both the letter section and her plot number. Once we finally found it, Barbara and I sang Happy Birthday to her.
Oscar Party 2022 And here we come to the reasoning for this weekend in particular being chosen for my trip. I had three weekends to choose from while Shobhit was in India, but this was the weekend of the Academy Awards! And I wanted to watch the Oscars with Barbara, just like I did every year during the ten years she lived in Seattle. Most of those years, I only half-jokingly suggested people come to compete for "Best Gown," and Barbara had a history of bringing it. She let me know earlier this month that this year she wasn't going to come with a gown, though. And, well, although it was just Barbara and me in person, between the number of people we got on video chat with—and I got on FaceTime with my friend Gabriel (and his girlfriend Lea) during most commercial breaks—you could say that this year's "Oscar Party" included a good five people, which alone would make it my biggest Oscar Party since 2009. If you count Shobhit's mom, who actually got on Skype to say hi to Barbara, with whom she had become friendly during her eight-week stay with us in 2008, then it's the biggest Oscar Party I've had since 2008. Fourteen years! I'm going to go ahead and count her. She's seen in the photo above, smiling and saying hi to Barbara. Shortly thereafter, Shobhit suggested his mom come back and say hi to me as well, something that in the past she would just ignore and walk away in response. To my genuine surprise, Shobhit's mom even smiled and said hi to me. It was brief, but it was almost jarringly pleasant, and literally the first time in the 18 years Shobhit and I have been together that she was openly, directly, personable to me. Shobhit only got on Skype with me a few times during the telecast, which of course I have tons to say about. But that's a conversation for another time and place!

Did I mention Barbara mended the sleeve tighteners on my going-on-ancient UNFI jacket? In fact, I just figured out I've had that jacket, which Elin gave me at work after a vendor rep had gifted to her and she said she'd never wear it, for over a decade. The glue on those flaps failed maybe a month or two ago, and I had been holding them down with safety pins so they would stop flopping around at the ends of my sleeves. Barbara offered to bring her sewing supplies and sew them back together for me during the Oscars. She did a great job!
Bonus! Just one last photo from Cave Hill Cemetery. I took this when we were still near Muhammad Ali's grave and I really love how it turned out. I had long been assuming there was a good chance this might be the one and only time I ever go visit Barbara in Louisville. So much for that! I'm already making lists of other things I want to do the next time I visit, probably in two or three years. Nashville is only a two and a half mile drive from there! [All associated full photo albums can be found on Flickr here.]

Louisville & Indianapolis 2022 [part one]

[From travelogue email sent at 9:55 p.m.] Thursday, March 24: Arrival Behold, the fabled Barbara! The storied, the celebrated, the legend, the widely beloved whether she chooses to recognize it or not, one of the three best friends I have ever had—one of three I initially dubbed "The Untouchables"! There was Danielle, the friend I have known since we were both 11 years old; there was Gabriel, the friend I met in college; and then there was Barbara, who I met sitting next to her in my horrid summer job in 1996 between my Sophomore and Junior years of college, cold calling people to do surveys from a call center in Spokane, WA. I was 22 and she was 43 (she was born the same year as both my mother and my stepmother, incidentally), and we met only about five days before my last day. But we were sitting in neighboring work stations and laughed a lot together, so when I finished my very last shift and she was in the middle of a call, I set a little note on her desk that read, I would like your address. She nodded, wrote it out for me, and thereafter began a penpal relationship that lasted the next four years, with my visiting her in Spokane several times and, after I graduated and moved from Pullman to Seattle in 1998, she visited me in Seattle a few times as well. Then, when I helped a friend start a new gay newspaper in Seattle in 2000 (which lasted all of 14 months, which is a whole other story), I convinced Barbara to move to Seattle to be our copy editor—something we were hell bent on having since it was a glaring omission at the awful place that was the Seattle Gay News. Plus, she'd already done that exact job for UPI in the seventies. She lived with me in my studio apartment for three weeks before finding her own place in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood; she worked as our copy editor for the Seattle Gay Standar's full 14-month history, and then she continued to live in Seattle for the next decade. She finally moved back to her original home state of Virginia, Arlington to be specific, to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. We largely fell out of touch after that, though never completely. During one of my visits to New York while Shobhit lived there in 2010, we took a day trip to Washington, D.C. and she took the subway into the city to spend the day with us. The next year, Shobhit and I flew her out to Spokane to spend one last Easter holiday with us and my family, and for her to see some of her Spokane friends, as my dad and Sherri went to Spokane that year to spend Easter with my brother and his kids. Before this past weekend, that was the last time I saw her, save for occasional holiday video chats with Dad and Sherri from Olympia. It had literally been 11 years—one more year, even, than she had lived in Seattle. But, she rather surprised a lot of us a year ago by suddenly moving to Louisville, Kentucky, of all places. We were like, whaaa?? Once I discovered Barbara had iChat and we could text a lot more easily, I got the scoop: she had decided it was finally time to move; she needed to live by herself again after living with various people in Arlington; she needed to find a place with a rent she could afford on her severely limited Social Security income. She did a nationwide web search and Louisville was the single place she found with rent that fit within her budget. So, Louisville it was. She moved near the end of March, 2021. I told her then that I would never have placed Louisville high on my list of places to visit but I always take any opportunity to visit someplace new, so I would come and visit as soon as I could. Shobhit is in India visiting his mother this entire month—something he usually does every two years but due to the pandemic this time it had been three—and I decided this was a perfect trip of my own to take while he was out of town. By sheer chance, not in the slightest bit deliberate or planned on my part, I wound up visiting with her on the exact one-year anniversary of her move to Louisville.

After all that, I guess I'll acknowledge this: many of you receiving these emails don't know Barbara at all, so might not be as interested in all of this. Too bad! I mean, you can choose not to read this if you're bored. I'm telling you though, Barbara is not boring! She's bright and kind and hilarious and has the most infectious laugh you've ever heard. Plus, I kept thinking about when people talk about friends they can see after an eternity and it's like they were never apart—because that was very much what this visit was like. Good friends: five stars, would recommend! Anyway. Let's talk about my travel day to Louisville, which I did by way of Charlotte, North Carolina. First of all, there are no nonstop flights from Seattle to Louisville, which sucks. I suppose it kind of makes sense, given the far greater proximity of the far greater number of major cities within the Eastern Time Zone (which Louisville is, somewhat barely), and it's not cost effective to have nonstop flights to all of them. There actually is one, solitary nonstop flight every day to Cincinnati, which is only a ninety minute drive from Louisville—and that's indeed what I now think I will do the next time I go visit Barbara. But for this visit, I wanted to take day trips to the two closest major cities to Louisville, and I wanted to take Barbara with me. It thus made more sense for my final flight destination to be Louisville itself, so that I would have Barbara with me before I went to Cincinnati. However, this also meant that, if I wanted to arrive at my Louisville hotel at a decent local time not too late in the evening, I had to take the 7:18 a.m. flight to Charlotte first. This meant I had to take the earliest Light Rail train from Capitol Hill to SeaTac Airport that even runs, which leaves at 4:51 a.m. And because my vanity is more important than any consideration of sleep deprivation, and I take an hour to get ready every morning plus more time needed for breakfast and final packing, that meant I had to set my alarm on Thursday morning for 2:45 a.m. That flight touched down just before 3 p.m. Eastern Time (so, roughly noon Pacific) in Charlotte, where I had a three-hour layover before taking a 6:09 p.m. flight back west (more like northwest) to Louisville, that flight lasting about an hour and a half. The first thing I saw when getting off the plane, in the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Aiport, was a statue of Colonel Sanders. To save me just a bit of time, Barbara walked the mile or so from her apartment to meet me at my hotel, which I drove to in the rental car I got for the weekend. We saw the pretty standard hotel room I had, on the top floor at my request—just the sixth floor but I'll take what I can get—and then we found a nearby place downtown to have dinner. I ordered a "bourbon mule" and it was fucking disgusting. I offered to drive Barbara home after dinner, which she was happy to accept, and I finally got to see her apartment—as well as her apartment building, which is much more massive than I ever throught to imagine: six floors, 45 units per floor with the exception of the ground floor which must have 23 units, as the total number of units is 247. It was originally built in 1917, with two "major additions" in 1925 and 1957, those presumably being the odd wings jutting back from the building's massively wide front facade. Barbara gave me a tour of the many very cool, spacious common areas on the ground floor and even a bit of the basement where there is a small convenience store! She commented on how much she loves the chandeliers hanging in the front lobby area, seen in the photo above (far above this ridiculous mass of text). I also got to see her actual apartment, a studio but with plenty of room for her, on the third floor. The building is called The Puritan. What irony!

Friday, March 25: Indianapolis I reserved two full days for day trips to the two closest other major cities: Friday was Indianapolis, which I chose to get out of the way first just because the drive there was the longest: about two hours one way. Had I made this decision based on weather forecasts and switched the days around, Cincinnati might have been more pleasant, weather-wise, but what's done is done I guess. I have had many people hear that I was going to visit Louisville, Indianapolis and Cincinnati, an their response was basically: "Uh. Why?" Because I have never been! Duh. Gabriel told me the one time he drove through Indianapolis, all he ever remembered about it was how gray it was. So, he was pretty amused to see photos of that day trip revealing dreary, drizzly weather pretty much the whole day. On the upside, that made our first stop, Crown Hill Cemetery, seem pretty appropriate. Barbara actually took the above shot with her phone. She was getting her shot of the beautiful entry gate, and I happened to be in the shot—so I deliberately shot and posed for her. I really think I augmented the structural beauty here nicely.

So, here's what I did with all three of these cities. Because I am me, and I am a nerd about skyscrapers and skylines, before the trip I spent a lot of time googling where the best views of the city were. (I did also find web pages for both Indianapolis and Cincinnati with recommendations for "things to do in one day," and selectively chose the most interesting to me.) In the case of Indianapolis, Crown Hill Cemetery was high on the list of vantage points for city views. I figured Barbara would be interested in an old cemetery on its own merits and I was correct. The thing was though, of course, it was a gray and dreary day. Mist and low clouds and fog seriously obscured the city view from the cemetery. In the above shot, you can see the Indianapolis skyline in the distance at the right. I still very much enjoyed exploring the cemetery though. I got to see President Benamin Harrison's grave! I mean, whoever the hell he was.

Another thing I did with both Indianapolis and Cincinnati, was order the points of interest I had on my list from north to south, so that when we were done we would be closest to getting back to Louisville when we were done. Second on the Indianapolis list: Canal Walk, a very nice and well manicured canal promenade adjacent to Downtown and stretches about three miles and connects to different parts of the White River at both ends. Barbara and I walked maybe a quarter mile down it and back, from the entry point my phone's Maps app directed us to. We had other shit to do!

Third stop in Indianapolis: Monument Circle, a pretty awesome centerpiece in the heart of Downtown Indianapolis, its signature feature being the pretty awesome Soliders & Sailors Monument, which stands 284 feet high—the equivalent of about twenty stories—and memorializes Indianans who "served in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Frontier Wars and the Spanish-American War." The tower seen to the right, which I fit into this shot using the wide angle lens feature, is Salesforce Tower, tallest building in Indiana. It was built in 1990, has 48 floors, and a rooftop height of 701 feet, but uses those things I like to call "cheater spires" to reach an official height of 811 feet. Typical!

And then, the highlight of my entire trip. Like many of the observatories I looked up in all the cities, Soliders & Sailors Monument's observatory was listed online as "closed until further notice"—presumably due to covid. So, imagine my surprise and delight when I walked up to the door and found that they were open! Not only that, but online they say you can climb the stairs for free but the elevator has a $2 fee, and they were even allowing the elevator rides for free! What the hell? I mean, even $2 is practically nothing but whatever. It brought me sheer joy to discover it was not only open, but free. I thought I would have opted to take those stairs, but discovered later that the elevator was absolutely the much better option.

The above shot is one of many I took from the observatory. Seen in the mid-distance on the right is the City-County Building (1960, 372 ft, 28 floors), which I was only aware of because it had its own observation deck on the top floor—also, apparently, temporarily closed due to covid. I never did go to the building to double check, even though the Soldiers & Sailors Monument turned out to be open; that was enough of a delight and we decided to move on (my guess is it actually was closed anyway).

Fourth stop in Indianapolis: a brief walk into Highland Park, from which I knew there were great views of downtown. This is my favorite of the shots I took from there—standing atop a tree stump, at Barbara's suggestion.

Fifth and last stop (sixth if you count the City-County building, which I only drove up near and parked for a few seconds to get a good exterior shot of it): the Fountain Square neighborhood, which was on any "Indianapolis In One Day" web pages I found. I also learned about it via my views searches, as there's a Rooftop Garden Cocktail Lounge located there—unsheltered though, and thus closed for the season. I still decided to go check out the neighborhood, at which we decided to find a place to eat as it was midafternoon and we still hadn't had lunch. So, after a brief stop for hot drinks at a local coffee shop, I did what Shobhit and I have learned to do ever since our 2014 trip to New Orleans: look for restaurants on Yelp with both a really large number of ratings and a high average rating. This approach has never failed us. I did this searching for vegetarian options, and found this vegan place called Three Carrots only a few blocks away. I had the Peanut Bowl (pictured, foreground) with tofu and rice and peanut sauce which was super tasty, and Barbara had the Roasted Veggie Quesadilla which she liked quite a lot more than she expected. This was the first place we encountered, outside of public transit or airports, that still asked all patrons to wear their mask when not seated at their table. Not that we spent a lot of time at places indoors anyway. Still, it slightly amused me that this was the case at a hippie place like a vegan restaurant: very on brand, at least as a covid-aware oasis in the American Midwest. We did find a literal fountain in Fountain Square, but it hardly seemed like the most prominent feature of the neighborhood. We walked around just a little, then decided we were ready to head back to Louisville.

Clarksville, Indiana We stopped where I wanted to take advantage of my one chance to get a panoramic, nighttime view of the Louisville skyline from across the Ohio River on our way back: from Ashland Park in Clarksville, Indiana. We actually reached there about half an hour before sunset, and I parked the car and waited for it to get dark enough to get this very satisfactory shot.

Saturday, March 26: Morning in Louisville And then, what happens on Saturday morning, just when I thought I was up and getting ready slightly ahead of schedule? The fire alarm goes off at my hotel! Like an idiot, I seriously considered just staying in my room. This must be why they make fire alarms so annoying—you won't stick around convinced it's a false alarm (as they usually are) because the noise is simply intolerable. There was also an automated voice that came on and said, Attention. There has been a report of an emergency. Please evacuate the building. Use stairwells where necessary. Handicapped people will follow the building's evacuation plan. Or something to that effect. I nearly got it memorized, it was repeated so many times. At least it happened just before I had gotten into the shower, and not during. As I stood outside in the bitter cold, observing others who had brought out all their luggage (I only got dressed and put on my jacket), I finally discovered what appeared to be a burst water pipe, coming from the third floor of the SpringHill Suites side of the Marriott I was staying at—the other end from Fairfield Inn & Suites, the slightly shorter wing with its own lobby (always unstaffed) where I was staying. The fire department was fairly impressive with how quickly they arrived. It probably wasn't even that long before they finally had the alarm turned off, and it just felt like an eternity because it was in the thirties out there.

The fire alarm probably delayed me close to an hour, but, the drive to Cincinnati was half an hour shorter, and I had already gotten up earlier on Saturday than I had on Friday, so we were set to get to Cincinnati not much later in the day than we had gotten to Indianapolis, so it basically worked out in the end. And first, a photo Barbara herself wanted: the Speed Art Museum, not far from Barbara's apartment, has a 24-foot wishbone on the lawn out front, and Barbara's idea was for us to be trying to break it so we could get our wish. I used my phone's self-timer, propped against my binoculars on the sidewalk, to get the shot. We didn't break the wishbone, but Barbara said she got her wish anyway. Because her wish was to get this picture! . . . Well. I've run out of time, and I have a whole second email planned to send. I'm tired! If you actually made it this far you're probably tired too. I'll just have to write up part two and send that one out tomorrow night! [For part two click here]