KY - OH - PA

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KY – OH – PA
When we arrived in KY last Saturday to visit with my cousin and her husband, Lyn and Brooks Atherton, the temperature was 102 degrees. Note the cows cooling off in the pond. The next day we saw Lincoln’s birthplace which is only a few miles from my cousins and the house that inspired KY’s state song, “My Old Kentucky Home.”
In addition to their farm work (although they live in St. Pete most of the year), they have their arthropod collecting. Brooks is more into ants and beetles and macro photography while Lyn’s passion is spiders, especially jumping spiders. They collect specimens and send them to a FL state agency which tracks arthropods throughout the state. When possible, Lyn raises her spiders to adulthood as adult bodies can be classified more accurately. One evening I had the pleasure of seeing Lyn feed live flies to her 30 or so spiders . They’re mostly jumping spiders, some just teeny tiny, although she does have a Black Widow which she doesn’t consider particularly dangerous. It’s amazing how she knows all their personalities – which have good appetites, which are nocturnal, which are escape artists, which are shy, etc. Lyn also has a large number of bird feeders and a very fat woodchuck which enjoys the left over sunflower seeds.
Then it began to rain -- and it’s rained for the past six days. We spent most of that time visiting my childhood friends in Dayton and Springfield, OH and driving around the area, so the rain wasn’t that bad. I wanted to revisit in Antioch College campus in Yellow Springs, but it’s empty. It was closed a couple of years ago. What an eerie scene – the whole lovely campus without anyone there. They may try opening it in a year or two, depending. Rand McNally had nominated Yellow Springs as one of five or six “fun” towns in the US, but it doesn’t look all that much fun anymore. It WAS a college town.
I’d keep forgetting how beautiful Ohio is. I’ve included a photo of a field of sunflowers and a huge patch of wildflowers in a state park. Also, there are a couple of scenes from an old mill. Ohio is a very rural state and , outside of towns, where ever you look are huge expanses of corn and soy fields and farm houses and barns and silos and huge lawns. And everything is well tended and tidy.
We'll write later about this scenic route in PA we're travelling right now. And the weather might just clear up.
Best, Paula & Bob

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Photos

cooling cows
The temperature was 102 this day.

Lincoln's parents
His mother died when Lincoln was 8.

Lincoln's early childhood home
This is inside the Memorial Building.

red-barn
This is at Lyn and Brooks' farm.

Comments

[Trish]

Wonderful photos thanks for sharing them.