Map of the Day 2 route from Columbus, Ohio along the Ohio River through Indiana to Evansville

5575 Miles · Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Day 2: Indiana

After a good breakfast at our hotel, we drove along a foggy I-71 to Cincinnati, OH, where the plan was to get off the highway and follow the Ohio River Scenic Byway along the border between Indiana and Kentucky, through Aurora, all the way to Madison, IN. If you ever happen to be around there I strongly recommend driving along this beautiful road.

The yellow Hillforest House Museum with its rounded porches and Fourth of July bunting

This is the Hillforest House Museum, in Aurora, IN. The National Historic Landmark is located right at the beginning of the Ohio River Scenic Byway, which we followed all the way to Madison, IN.

A church spire above rooftops by the Ohio River

A brick house with a flower bed and a red fire hydrant

A white porch decorated with flags and bunting behind a pale tree trunk

Corn seedlings are proverbially supposed to be as high as someone's knee by July 4th. The following pictures were taken on July 4th but, as you can clearly see, the corn is certainly not knee-high.

A country lane curving between fields of corn

A green field stretching to a white farmhouse and barn

A child cycling along a path beside a cornfield

Two cyclists on a gravel road between cornfields

A silver SUV parked by a field of wildflowers

Francesco photographing from beside the car at the edge of a cornfield

We were driving along the Ohio River Scenic Byway when, all of a sudden, I noticed this abandoned grocery store. It was too late to stop, so I kept going, but for the next few minutes I had this very picture framed in my mind, with the beautiful contrast of the green weeds with the reds and blues of the two vending machines and of all the other signs. It took me about a mile to decide that I had to make a u-turn and drive back to capture this image.

An abandoned grocery store with Pepsi and Coke vending machines among the weeds

A little before lunch time we drove through Rising Sun, a quiet town on the western side of the Ohio River. We stopped on Main Street and took a brief walk.

Main Street in Rising Sun, with flags and benches along the shops

An old painted hardware advertisement on a brick wall

A grey clapboard house behind a lush garden

A red double door in a pale grey brick church

On the corner of Main Street and Poplar Street there was this house with this beautiful brick wall painted deep blue and a metal staircase painted white going to the second floor.

It reminded me of the colors of the American flag and, if you know me well you also know how drawn I am to interesting geometries. I could not let this one pass by without taking a few pictures.

A deep blue brick wall under a white metal staircase

Once it started drizzling, we went back to the car and drove to Madison, where we stopped at the Sweet Kernel to enjoy a delicious burger and a soda, fully immersed in the colorful experience of this nice little diner.

The counter of a small diner with ketchup bottles and a cook

Red diner stools along a counter over a checkerboard floor

The colourful dining room of the Sweet Kernel diner

After we made the decision to take a cross-country road trip, one of the most difficult things to do was to decide which route to follow. We spent many nights going through all the possible options. Finally, we picked US 50 to guide our trip, including several detours to allow us to reach all the destinations we wanted to visit along the journey. US 50 is a major east-west route, stretching 3,000 miles from Ocean City, Maryland to West Sacramento, California, crossing the United States right in the middle.

Therefore, it was with some excitement that, in the afternoon of the second day of our trip, we reached US 50 for the first time and followed it for a couple of hundred miles, arriving at our hotel, north of Evansville, IN, by dinner time, when the trip odometer read 995 miles.