Backroads Across Ohio

We spent the night at John and Patsy Frylings home in Ironton, Ohio.  John is taking care of his wife Patsy who is terminally ill.  We were able to see and talk with her for about 10 minutes before she fell asleep.  John says she sleeps in her hospital bed for 23 of the 24 hours in the day.  He is tied to the house as care-giver unless the hospice people are there to give him a break.
We woke to a semi-cloudy day of 61 degrees.  We said a tearful goodbye to our good friend, John.  Then we found a Ford dealer in Ashland, Ky. to get the 3000 mile oil change on our little new Focus.  Got in first thing and we were back on the road by 10:30am.  Crossed into Ohio over the Ohio River Bridge which is so beautiful!  It reminds us of the "Sundial bridge" in Reading, CA.  Then we headed north toward Lake Erie and Sandusky, Ohio.  The weather cleared and the temperature already bounced to 75 degrees where it stayed the rest of the day.  As we traveded along the Ohio, we watched barges being pushed along by huge tug boats.  It was a lovely drive with a little bit of color appearing in roadside trees.

The bridge at Porsmouth,Ky. to Ohio.

And old country cemetary.

Harvesting corn.

Emptying the corn into the hopper.

As we travel, the rolling hills appearing and also rolling highways.  Lots of color now, but not quite brilliant yet.  Later the hills even out into nice level farms of acres and acres of either corn or soybeans or both.  We pass very old beautiful homes and churches.  And we see many old cemetaries...many of which are little family plots with large lovely headstones.  There are many huge silo type storages near the highway.  We are hoping to actually see a corn harvest in progress.....and finally we did!  It was amazing, they combined the entire corn stalk and out came the little individual, yellow corn kernals into the combine hopper.  Then it emptied into a holding hopper, then it was transfered to a semi truck which waited for the load right in the field.  Gased up before Sandusky and got 40.1 miles per gallon on the Focus.  We are now holed up in a lovely new comfort Inn for only 59 dollars per night.  And there is an Applebee's Restaurant right next door where we ate dinner.