So this day was fairly clearly bifurcated. In the morning, I drove through Jaguar Heaven: narrow winding mountain roads in good condition with little traffic and gorgeous weather: dramatic patches of fog in the hollers, puffy white clouds higher up. The scenery was consistently pretty all morning, with forest and streams and occasional small towns. I got all the counties of Kentucky that I'd intended to pass through, and got to the Ohio River around two o'clock in the afternoon.
Within ten minutes everything had changed. As soon as the big river is out of sight in the rearview mirror, Ohio flattens out and becomes dull. Traffic appears out of nowhere to clog the straight, monotonous highways, bunching at the many traffic signals (There is, I think, only one in all of Kentucky east of Lexington. But every cross street in Ohio seems to warrant one, and they are always red for cars on the main road.) The blessing is that Ohio is a pretty small state, and I'm speaking as both a Westerner and a snob.
One thing in Ohio's favour: they seem to take the corona virus a little more seriously here. Most people wear masks. Businesses, while open, have done sensible things like reorganised traffic patters in the shops and restaurants with one-way aisles; disposable menus and utensils are the rule here. And everybody keeps their distance from everyone else.
I took only one photograph today, so I might as well put it here. Look closely.
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| Traffic jam legacy |
So: I've reached the farthest point I planned to go to on this trip. That means that, technically, I started for home when I turned left on US 20 this evening. I figure it'll take me at least 3 more days to get home, probably 4; the plan is to drift back down to the Ohio River in Indiana, then clip the corner of Kentucky, mosey across southern Missouri, and then pick up a freeway in Kansas and head home. But if my previous experience with Indiana is anything to go by, I may not wait until Kansas. We'll see.
Oh, and I just remembered one other nice thing that happened today. I was stuck in traffic north of Columbus when the car next to me honked and the driver signalled that he wanted to tell me something. A brake light out? A low tire? Some piece of clothing hanging out of my trunk? I turned down the radio and dropped my window and he shouted out that I was driving his dream car.
It's not the first compliment this little grey Jag has prompted, nor even already the last, but it was the nicest and most surprising. Made me feel good, until the next closed-for-construction road I encountered. Google Maps got a workout this afternoon.
