Time to Go Home...Say Goodbye to Maysville...Give some Credit!

 Chandler's is a lovely place to enjoy delicious meals here in Maysville. Long may it prosper!

The graceful sweep of the older bridge between Maysville and Aberdeen, OH on the summer evening.

Tiles created by the hand prints of local students in various shades of terra cotta. Distinctive style!

"Vintage" little Brown's Motel in Aberdeen. Clean, a throwback to the 50's, so cute! For one or two, the older, little rooms were perfect. There is a newer addition with more modern, larger rooms.

More about Maysville, KY...it's a photogenic little town

Maysville, Ky: Not just a suburban town...

an old river town, built against a hillside, rising from the Ohio River, with many interesting vistas..

 the original foundation of this out dated garage, built of limestone, appears to have a defensive slit window or opening from the days when people may have used such a thing to shoot from?

and just a random view of the river from half way up the bluff.

The Feeling of Maysville, KY on a Summer Evening...

It's an old river town east of Cincinnati on the Ohio River. It's seen a "hay day" but is not quite finished.

Thurmond, WV...ghost town with an Amtrak Station

Once a booming mountain town for service to the railroads, Thurmond is now empty. People live in the surrounding areas; the Depot is a stop for Amtrak along the way from NY to Cincinnati. In the boom years, the rail space was so valuable, the town did not have walk ways.

Astonishing, True but Legendary Pioneer Adventure of the New River Region: "Follow the River" by James Alexander Thom

I found the book at the ranger station at the restored depot at Thurmond, WV. It re-tells in detail the amazing situation a young pioneer lady found herself in when she and a party of fellow settlers (including her two young sons) were captured from their remote western Virginia farm by a Shawnee war party in 1755. They were force-marched along the New River to the Ohio River and finally by canoe to a Shawnee town in Ohio. On the way, our heroine, Mary Drapper Ingles, gives birth to a baby girl and carefully watches the route taken along the rivers. (It is not certain whether the historic Mary had that baby.) In the village of the Shawnee, she witnesses other prisoners' torture; a Shawnee leader is smitten with fictional Mary, and shelters the new mother from these ordeals. Mary does not succumb to his advances, so he takes her sons from her and gives her and the baby to  French traders as slaves: Mary spends a few months creating European style shirts of French fabric for her master to sell to the Shawnee.

The real adventure begins when the French trader takes several white captives and a few Shawnee guards back across the Ohio to a make salt at Big Bone Lick in Northern Kentucky. The white captives, mostly women, are forced to do the hard labor of boiling salty water to produce the salt. No one has ever escaped from the salt lick, so the Shawnee are loose with security; Mary and another woman captive are able to walk away at the end of a hard day making salt in October.
(In order to make her escape, she is forced to abandon her new baby to the care of a young squaw, mistress of one of the French traders.)

The author says he researched his book by retracing on foot the route taken by the two women. He had tents and proper equipment for the ~1,000 mile hike, but the pioneer ladies did not. Neither did they have a good supply of food or weapons. In aching detail, day by day, he tells of their likely experiences, severe ordeals with cold, hunger and terror. Historically, we know they made it back alive; the fictional re-imagining is a page-turner. I loved this book.

The Bridge of the New River Gorge ... a Must See

 An amazing creation of the 1970's, made from the same kind of steel used in Chicago for our city hall: it will rust on the surface only, creating a wonderful patina; then the rusting stops. It's a mellow dark matte burgundy.

 From the road above, it's a mile drive and a great view

but from below, on the evocative New River, it leaps with surefooted grace and strength.