After that we found a coffee roasters in downtown Columbus just a few blocks away called Cafe Brioso. They roast their own beans and have free wi-fi for blogging. Can't beat that!

We are finally putting some distance between us and our starting point in Maryland. By the end of our first two days on the road, we were still only one state away, Pennsylvania. We have now made it three states away. Granted, the 14 mile strip of West Virginia that we crossed didn't cover much distance, but at least it feels like we've traveled further.

We should also mention that the weather on this trip overall has been phenomenal. Not hot, humid weather the summer usually brings to the south and east. We only had one bad night on our way east around the Houston area, but the storm the following day cooled the temperatures down pretty well. There was also one day that was supposed to be very bad while we were in Maryland, but even that wasn't as bad as predicted. The weather since we started our way back has been perfect! Sunny and breezy. Not too hot. We saw a few showers in Pittsburgh and Columbus, but nothing to put a damper on things.

After we left Columbus, we took Interstate 71 south to Cincinnati. A rather uneventful drive as you can't see much from the freeway. Just a lot of farmland. We passed through Cincinnati rather quickly and crossed the Ohio River at mile 5393 into Covington, Kentucky around 12:30pm. Very happy to find that it isn't the "Cincitucky" that we had heard about, but quite a nice riverfront town with a gorgeous view of the Cincinnati skyline.

We crossed the Ohio via the Roebling Suspension Bridge which was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1866. It served as the prototype for John A. Roebling's design of the Brooklyn Bridge for which he gained greater fame. It also exceeded the Cincinnati bridge in length when it opened in New York in 1883 breaking his own record.

From Covington, we drove east along the river to Newport, KY where we had our very first ever White Castle experience. For those of you who have never been to the midwest (or seen the movie) White Castle is America's oldest hamburger fast food restaurant chain known for it's small-sized square burgers called "slyders." White Castle was arguably made world famous, or at least world known, originally by the Beastie Boys back in the 80s on their "Licensed to Ill" album. White Castle was made an even bigger name more recently by Harold and Kumar. Never saw the movie actually. Gotta rent it now. By the way, for those of you who read the blog really closely on the Pacific Northwest trip last year, got caught up on the whole "Deadwood" series, still haven't seen "A River Runs Through It" though. Go back and read it, you'll get it. Anyway, outside of the novelty of the small, square White Castle hamburgers, one of us was indifferent to it otherwise. The other one gobbled it up voraciously.

After lunch, we crossed back into Ohio and the city of Cincinnati. We drove around just for a little bit to see the developing riverfront area, but didn't get to see much else of the city. Indianapolis was on our horizon.

Indiana
We crossed the Indiana state line at mile 5422 and got to Indianapolis at about 3pm and made our first stop at the state capitol building.

By the way, some of you may be wondering about this obsession with state capitols. It started quite by accident on the last trip. There are some cities that don't have much going on, or at least that we can see from our singular paths through many of the places we have been. Helena, the capitol of Montana, happened to be one of the those places. We stopped there looking for a grocery store to replenish the ice supply and stumbled upon the capitol building. The building and the grounds surrounding it were so beautiful that we just had to take a picture. We followed that with Cheyenne, Wyoming and Denver, Colorado, and it just became a "thing." Regretfully, we didn't come up with this when we passed near Salem, Oregon, or through Sacramento, California or Olympia, Washington before that. Now it has become sort of a challenge to see how many state capitols we can get pictures of.

We drove around the central part of downtown Indianapolis briefly and then turned to the northwest part of the city which is home to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Actually, it's in the town of Speedway which is completely surrounded by the city of Indianapolis. The speedway complex was built in 1909 and the first running of the "500" was in 1911, but it was billed the "International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race." It didn't become commonly recognized as the "Indianapolis 500" until after WWII. You can actually drive under the track into the infield where the Hall of Fame Museum is located. New picture: