The Spokesrider

We just got back from three days of Spokesriding in Ohio and Indiana.     The above photo was taken towards the end of today’s ride, across the St Mary’s River from Rockford, OH.   The marker post marks the edge of what was once Black Loon’s reserve.    It’s one of those property lines that’s in a slightly [...]

Fort Loramie is a good place to use as a base camp. It’s an old canal town. There are no B&Bs and no chain motels, but there is a Ma ‘n Pa type motel, the Dairy King Motel. To register we walked up to the same sidewalk window where we later got an ice cream. The room is clean, spacious, and inexpensive.

I’ve been reading “The Ohio Frontier” by R. Douglas Hurt (1996) in preparation for some riding later this summer. I am now getting to like this book, but was disappointed by some of the first chapters. The chapter titled “Clash of cultures” was not particularly insightful on cultural issues. There was much awkward use of [...]

Two small segments of treaty line roads are on either side of the Great Miami River. The small “horizontal” jog shown on the highway sign above is one of them. I was on the north side of the line. On the other side was land that the Shawnees and other Great Lakes Indians were forced to cede to the United States after the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794.

The roads all morning had been quiet, level, and well maintained. I was wondering why this road was called “Deep Cut Road.” I had chosen this route partly because the name intrigued me. But it was quiet and level. There had obviously been no need to cut the road through hills or anything of that sort.

I hung around Fort Recovery for a while, visiting in addition to the big monument, the museum and the grounds. This is a shot of the reconstructed fort, with the museum in the background. The museum may have been “professionalized” a bit since my last time here — which has its good and its bad [...]

The ride to Fort Recovery was mostly easy, on flat roads, though against a wind from the east. It ended up being a little longer than 20 miles from the campground because at one point I thought I had lost my Indiana map, so backtracked a mile to my previous stop to look for it. [...]