Dayton, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana

We arrived at the Aviation Trail Visitor Center in Dayton and noticed this Little Library in a park next door.

Before Orville and Wilbur Wright created their "flying machines," they built and sold bicycles.

As they pursued their childhood fascination with aviation, they used tools and parts from their bicycle shop to create a series of gliders.

When the brothers realized that all existing data for lift and drag were wrong, they developed their own data on wing shape using a wind tunnel of their own design.

They took to the streets of Dayton on this bicycle which they specially outfitted with a horizontal revolving wheel in order to test various wing shapes.

A replica of one of their first gliders, built in 1902 and tested at Big Kill Devil Hill, North Carolina.

The Wright brothers' success wasn't just in their design of a flying machine, but in their ability to control it in the air.  In order to do that, they made several key discoveries and inventions.  One important invention that allowed them to turn the plane was wing-warping, a method for twisting wing tips, as a soaring bird does when it rolls from side to side.  From repeatedly watching birds fly, they learned to make banked turns by simultaneously using wing-warping, controlled by the movement of a hip cradle, and hand-held rudder controls; solutions still basic to controlling aircraft today.

In the following three pictures, notice how the wings twist (warp) as the figurine moves its hips.

Finding no scientific data for aircraft propellers, the Wrights developed their own theory for propeller design based on laws of physics and mathematics.  The propellers were powered by a lightweight engine built to their specifications in their bicycle shop.

In late 1903, they assembled the new airplane parts near Big Kill Devil Hill where their painstaking research, engineering, design and construction finally paid off as they launched the first manned, powered, heavier-than-air aircraft capable of free, controlled, sustained flight.  This is the 1905 version of their aircraft which included larger wings and wider propeller blades that allowed higher altitude, longer flight time and the ability to land undamaged.  They considered it their most important model and based their first production aircraft on it.

On the final leg of our road trip, we left Dayton and headed to Indiana.  In the early 1800s, John Chapman roamed parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois purchasing small plots of land and planting apple orchards.  His decades-long efforts earned him the nickname Johnny Appleseed and he is buried in Fort Wayne.

Johnny Appleseed, Pat Leifer, c 1965, woodcut

Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio

We traveled to Lexington, the center of Bluegrass Country.  On the city's outskirts are hundreds of the world's most celebrated horse farms.  Nearly 50,000 horses are bred in the Lexington area each year. In 1789, not long after horses were brought here from Virginia, the census noted more horses than humans.

We visited the Kentucky Horse Park and its International Museum of the Horse.  The museum carefully documents the evolution of the horse and its history with humans, and includes an excellent collection of historical artifacts.

A hunting scene from ancient Egypt.

A broach from Scythia, c 500-400 BC.

These ancient Roman horseshoes, made of iron, were tied with leather thongs around the horse's legs, not nailed to their hooves.

This T'ang dynasty (c 618-906 AD) Chinese horse is an excellent example of horses found buried in the tombs of nobles and officials.

During the late Middle Ages, as armor protection for riders became more effective, their horses became targets.  This German horse-head armor (chanfron) dates from about 1560 AD.  The long, pointed spikes at the bottom of the picture are calthrops.  Used to disable the horses of an advancing enemy, they were one of the cruelest defenses against cavalry ever invented.

Full armor, called barding, for rider and horse quickly evolved out of necessity.  The armor in this French Victorian statue by Granger of Paris, is fully articulated.

Although the game of polo did not become a western pastime until 1869 when British officers brought it to England from India, records exist showing that it was played in Persia (modern-day Iran) during the time of Darius I, c 500 BC.  This colorful miniature dates to 1520 and shows the nobility of Persia playing polo.

This 19th century reproduction of a much older tile is a vibrant example of the importance of the horse in Persian art.

The Kentucky Horse Park also boasts the burial place of the legendary racehorse, Man O War, whose running stride was twenty-eight feet.

Located on the Ohio River, Cincinnati has some beautiful hills and bluffs.

We stopped at the scenic cliff-top Eden Park, overlooking the Ohio River.  

And yes, it snowed.  In fact it developed into a white-out.

It was here that the city placed a replica of The Capitoline Wolf, donated in 1931 by Benito Mussolini.  The bronze sculpture depicts the moment when Romulus and Remus, the mythological eventual founders of the city of Rome, were saved from starvation by a mother wolf.  The original sculpture of the lone wolf, cast sometime between the 10th and 11th centuries AD, has been housed in a palace on the Capitoline Hill in Rome since 1471.  The figures of Romulus and Remus were added sometime in the 15th century.  Mussolini, who considered himself the founder of the "New Rome," gave the sculpture to Cincinnati as a token of goodwill to celebrate a Sons of Italy national convention here.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Tennessee and Lexington, Kentucky

We spent the day driving through the forests and valleys of the Smokies.  One of the most beautiful valleys is Cades Cove.  The Cherokee camped and hunted in this cove, but there is no evidence that they ever built villages here.  European settlers arrived in the 1820s and lived and farmed here until it was made part of the national park in the 1930s.

For Anne the best thing about Cades Cove was the bears.  Jim found an interesting rock and stole it, making Anne an accessory to a federal crime.

The first bear we saw was very far away across a field.

Later we saw a mother and her cub in a wooded area.

Another beautiful spot is called The Sinks, through which flows the Little River.

The next day we left the Smokies and headed to Knoxville, Kentucky in the rain.  Heavy rains here have resulted in spontaneous waterfalls as water seeps out of road cuts that have cut through rock layers containing aquifers (pores and fractures filled with water).

Knoxville hosted the 1982 World's Fair.  The theme of the Fair was "energy turns the world," and Fair officials decided that a Sunsphere best symbolized that theme.

A Native American burial mound has been preserved in a park on the campus of the University of Kentucky.  The University partners with a local Cherokee organization to maintain the mound and a garden near it.  This prehistoric burial mound is estimated by archaeologists to be associated with the Late Woodland period, which spans the years 600 to 1,000 AD.

Cherokee Reservation and Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina

Before leaving Asheville we stopped at the Basilica of Saint Lawrence, completed in 1909.  The exterior is Spanish Renaissance.  With a massive stone foundation of North Carolina granite and a solid brick superstructure, no beams of wood or steel were used anywhere in its construction.

 
The church's dome is the largest freestanding elliptical dome in North America.  The architect, Rafael Guastavino, emigrated here from Catalan, where he was credited with being responsible for the revival of an ancient tile and mortar building system that had been used in Catalonia and other parts of Spain for centuries. The system employs layers of thin tile bedded in layers of mortar to create curved horizontal surfaces.  Floors, roofs, ceilings and stairs can all be formed with this system, usually in the shape of vaults or domes.  In the basilica every horizontal interior surface is made with this combination of tile and mortar.  The effect is stunningly fluid.

This street musician serenaded us as we left Asheville.

We visited the Museum of the Cherokee Indian located on the Cherokee Reservation.  The inhabitants of this reservation are descended from the Cherokee people who escaped the Trail of Tears by hiding in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Following are a few of the artifacts we found interesting.

We left the reservation and headed into the Great Smoky Mountains.