Part Three: Louisville to Columbus
The Two-Week Loop: 1. Houston to Nashville › 2. Nashville to Louisville › 3. Louisville to Columbus › 4. Columbus to Erie › 5. Erie to Houston
Coming off the museum binge that closed part two in Louisville, we crossed the Ohio River and gave Cincinnati two full days, which is one more than most people give it and, it turns out, exactly the right number.
Cincinnati is a city that keeps its best material at eye level and slightly off the main drag. It has a warehouse where dead neon comes back to life, a train station so aggressively Art Deco it feels like a movie set, and a walk across the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, the span that taught the Brooklyn Bridge everything it knows. It also has the hills, which means the view keeps changing on you whether you asked it to or not.
Day two took the trip’s first genuinely heavy turn, a morning at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, sitting on the north bank of the river people risked everything to cross. Then Ohio being Ohio, we drove two hours up the road and got shot out of a human slingshot, and stood at the feet of a bronze Arnold Schwarzenegger roughly the size of a delivery van. This state does not do transitions gently.
Trip Route Map
The Stops
American Sign Museum
The country's biggest public collection of vintage signs: a warehouse of glowing neon and hand-painted advertising in Cincinnati's Camp Washington, with a working neon shop out back.
Cincinnati Union Terminal – Cincinnati, OH
A 1933 Art Deco masterpiece, a half-dome train station turned museum center, its rotunda said to have inspired the Super Friends' Hall of Justice.
Elsinore Arch – Cincinnati, OH
An 1883 water works valve house built as a Hamlet castle at the edge of Eden Park.
Cincinnati Art Museum – Cincinnati, OH
A free, encyclopedic art museum in Eden Park, spanning 6,000 years of art from around the world.
Ault Park – Cincinnati, OH
A hilltop Cincinnati park crowned by a 1930 Italian Renaissance pavilion, with formal gardens, a cascading fountain down its grand staircase, and a terrace that looks for miles over the Little Miami valley. Free, and one of the city's prettiest quiet corners.
Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens – OH
One of the oldest zoos in the country, home of Fiona the hippo, wrapped in award-winning botanical gardens.
National Underground Railroad Museum – Cincinnati, OH
On the banks of the Ohio River, the line so many crossed to freedom. Exhibits trace slavery, the Underground Railroad, and the fight for freedom right up to the present.
Franklinton Slingshot – Columbus, OH
A 20-foot, 6,000-pound slingshot held mid-draw by a giant stone hand in Columbus's Franklinton arts district.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Statue – Columbus, OH
Eight feet and 600 pounds of bronze Arnold in his twisted double-biceps pose, planted on the High Street sidewalk outside the Columbus Convention Center. It marks his 1970 Mr. World win in town and the Arnold Classic he's thrown here every spring since 1989.
The Ones That Got a Wave, Not a Post
Lunch at Incline Public House came with a skyline attached, and Columbus’s Scioto Mile riverfront filled the gaps between the headline stops. The usual road-trip machinery (warehouse clubs, parking lots, protein) hummed along in the background where it belongs.
Next comes the single longest day of the whole loop, part four, Columbus to Erie: Cleveland, castles, and covered bridges, all on one Sunday.