Travel

J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey

DAY 3, 4 – CINCINNATI, OHIO: A long drive yesterday — over 400 miles — but CCR kept us company (”Walkin along the river road at night / Barefoot girls dancin in the moonlight / … if you get lost, come home to Green River.”), as did a friend’s bon voyage gift of Sting’s ‘Bring on the Night.’

We walked around Beulah Park in Grove City, Ohio: a pretty little B-track; too bad there’s no racing there at the moment. Karen took my picture in front of Fred Stone’s beautiful portrait of a grey, a bay, and a chestnut straining towards the finish line.

Note: Home bases of four tractor trailers we passed on I-71, as stencilled on the drivers’ doors: Xenia, Ohio; Centralia, Illinois; Waterloo, Iowa; Jackson, Tennessee.

Note: One of the rules posted on the gate to the swimming pool at our Best Western here in Cincinnati: “Spitting, spouting water, blowing the nose, or discharging bodily waste in the pool is strictly prohibited.”

Today we attended the races at River Downs to research a scene for the new book. A win/show wager on an 8-year-old stallion named Vacancy, who was nipped at the wire by the favourite, Gold Sneaker, broke us even. We enjoyed a complementary pulled pork sandwich, admired our surroundings (rolling wooded hills beyond the backstretch), stayed for a few more two races, then returned to our stalwart 1997 GMC Jimmy, and headed south across the Ohio River into Kentucky, where we spent an edifying hour (not to mention $30) visiting the Creation Museum in Petersburg. My son had reported that when he was there a month ago he learned that the creationists’ compromise with science asserts that while, yes, dinosaurs did roam the earth, they were only around for a couple of thousand years, and furthermore that Noah had them on the ark! I tried to picture a couple of tyrannosaurus rexes stabled next to a pair of sheep, but came up empty. There was even a model of the ark with various pairs of animals — goats, giraffes, brontosauruses — ascending the gangway in orderly fashion. All I can say is that was one big boat.

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