As a child of Cincinnati, I’ve been fascinated with the Ohio River my whole life. For a number of years, I’d wanted to visit Cairo, IL just to see where the Ohio spills into the Mighty Mississippi. In March of last year, Adam and I hopped into the Challenger to check it out. This was the initial round trip voyage with Traveller, our 2018 Challenger. The weekend prior, I had picked it up in Corydon, IN and made the trek back to Nashville with it.
As we made our way northwest toward Illinois, we first stopped at Fort Campbell just outside Clarksville, TN. Fort Campbell is the home of the Airborne Rangers, and we wanted to see the museum they have on base. While the museum building was closed for renovation, we were still able to enjoy the outside air park that they have.
Our next stop was just outside Wickliffe, KY at Fort Jefferson Hill Park and Memorial Cross. This site has a pretty interesting history dating back to 1789, and you can read more about it here. Of course, it made for a good photo opportunity with the new ride!
From there is was on to the confluence of the rivers. So, the bad news is that the area had just experienced some pretty bad flooding, and the road that leads the last 3/4 mile or so to the confluence was closed. I didn’t come all that way and wait all those years to be denied, so Adam and I parked the car in a safe (relatively) area and walked in from there. We had a few ‘mud’ opportunities, but the where the rivers come together was worth the walk.
From there we drove across into Missouri and wound up in Charleston at a large gas station / fireworks store / everything you can imagine store called Boomland. When we went in there was an elderly man sitting by the door who told Adam that he was ‘Mr. Boomland’, and owned all of this. He seemed to be drawing quite a crowd of locals. I’ll say if you are ever in the area, you should at least take a break from the road to walk through this place. You can learn more here.
On the way back, there was a very bad head on accident just outside Wickliffe between a van and a semi truck, which blocked our path home. We doubled back through Cairo and went north, then east. We made our way through Metropolis and crossed the river there, which made us plan a return trip that you can read about here.
Oh By The Way……..
As a special side note, earlier this week we posted about our trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville for our #TBT post, found here. My sweet wife remembered the trip well herself, and left the following comment:
I’d forgotten about the whole ‘bung-hole’ experience, but was able to find this wonderful picture tonight to prove her memories were correct. I know we were in a very dark part of the building, but not sure why all the kids have such evil eyes, or who Rachael was giving ‘side eye’.
lastchancepowerdrive.com 