Day 1 of my trek on the ADT is in the books. I started walking around 7:30am, after getting dropped off by the airport bus on 5th and Elm in Cincinnati, and finished up just after 5pm, in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. I love having a long first day, and this certainly delivered; I was particularly motivated to have a three-state walk, with lots of kms in Ohio and Kentucky, and then a short burst of Indiana at the end–with lots more to come in the days ahead.
Since this is the first blog post from the road, here’s what you can expect: these posts are basically public journal entries, compiling quick reactions on the day’s events. There may be some occasional more artfully crafted pieces, but these will generally be opportunities for me to document what happened. Each post will end with more technical notes that are oriented towards other people who are thinking about walking the ADT; if you don’t fall under that umbrella, they probably aren’t worth reading. I’m selecting a few pics to feature on Instagram each day, which fit together to offer some sort of narrative on the walk, and then I’ll upload all of the pics that I took (that were worth saving) to Facebook. If I can goad myself into shooting video, that’ll end up on youtube.
The first couple hours of today’s walk may have been the highlight. Cincinnati was striking–it’s downtown core seemed to be compromised by multiple decades of neglect, but the riverfront proved to be a dramatic contrast with two shiny sports stadia, a stunning museum devoted to the Underground Railroad (which I hope to visit when I make it back to Cinci on foot next spring), and lots of nice grassy park spaces. The bridge over the Ohio River is undergoing some renovation, but it was still open to pedestrians, and I was on my way to Kentucky.
Covington, Kentucky–Cincinnati’s cross-river twin–is a sprawling place. The initial downtown area has some fancy hotels and a lot of empty spaces. Pretty much everything was closed as I passed through, including what I imagine is a lively main street area in the old German neighborhood, so I had to settle for some gas station coffee (made more exciting when a car careened into a pole on the edge of the station). A modest ascent followed (I don’t know if any other kind exists out here), to Devou Park, a large greenspace in the hills above Covington. It offers a brilliant view of Cincinnati and lots of trails. Unfortunately, the ADT stuck with asphalt all the way through.
After descending from Devou, I saw my first ADT waymark, which was pretty exciting. The route then led through a couple of smaller towns, Ludlow and Bromley, and then along a highway parallel to the Ohio River for miles. It was… not great walking… but it had a couple of fun moments. First, I passed a cop as he was dealing with a guy he had pulled over. It sounded like he was busting the guy’s chops in front of his daughter, laying out all of the potential downsides of a speeding ticket (before, I expect, he let them off with a warning). Not five minutes later, the police officer pulled up alongside me: “I just wanted to check and make sure you don’t need a ride somewhere.” I told him what I was doing and he encouraged me to moderate my pace over the first few days. Anyway, it seemed like a very smooth way for him to gauge my threat level. After that, I had a bicyclist stop for a chat; it turns out, his name is Keith and he helped to create the route through the Cincinnati area.
Finally, the highway brought me to the Anderson Ferry dock, where a ferry has been connecting KY and OH for around 200 years now. Cost me 50 cents to get back to Ohio. And then… I was back on paved roads, pushing through a bunch of miles to Sayler Park, Addyston, and North Bend. This section ultimately climbed up onto the ridge, offering some really nice views of the Ohio River, but the pavement definitely wore on me, as did some bad food luck. I pretty much lived out of gas station shops today, until Lawrenceburg.
North Bend has some presidential ties, as it’s William Henry Harrison’s old home (and thus also the birthplace of Benjamin Harrison). A towering memorial is devoted to him; there were two visitors when I passed by, but they never got out of their car. I was dragging a bit by that point. As the afternoon wore on, I found myself wishing for more water opportunities; I didn’t want to knock on anybody’s door, so I intended to catch a friendly person in their yard, but nobody was in their yard! Just as I grew frustrated, though, a minivan pulled onto the shoulder in front of me. A man got out of it, handed me an ice cold bottle of water, and wished me well. Then he hopped back in his minivan, turned around, and went home.
Thunder and lightning started to appear in the late afternoon, along with some drizzle, but on the whole I got pretty lucky. There was definitely some harder precipitation hitting the areas around me, but I managed to avoid the worst of it.
On the whole, it wasn’t a great walk–hopefully the 30 straight miles of paved walking won’t be a common feature of this trek–but that’s often the reality when coming out of big cities. Even with some tough conditions, though, it was awesome to pull off the triple-state walk out of the gates.
Technical Notes
- I alternated between the turn-by-turn guides and the gps. Both were highly reliable. My only two hiccups were a) finding the stairs to Devou Park (I ended up following the road) and b) decoding where the alternate route descriptions began/ended in the turn-by-turns, as it gets a little muddled there. Otherwise, though, my first experience with the ADT materials was really positive
- I’m using the ViewRanger app for my gps tracks. I download a few days’ worth of tracks for offroad use, and will continue doing that as I move forward
- It was neat to see the big ADT sign at the route split in Elizabethtown. While I only encountered a couple of ADT stickers in the walk prior to that, I saw several different stickers in the short walk after that
- It seems like there are some places that footpaths might be possible instead of roads–Devou Park for sure, and maybe on the Hillside walk after the ferry. It would be worth looking into that
Looking forward to Day 2!
Dave
