Heading South from Dayton, Ohio · · PAGE 37.

July 27, 2019: The visit to the US Air Force Museum ended with the GPS waypoint from 2:09 PM today as we started the car and headed out of the museum parking lot.  This aerial view shows the active Wright-Patterson Air Force base and the old base where the museum is located.  The BLUE LINE is our GPS ground track for our departure heading south after leaving the museum and looking for a place to get a late lunch.

Here is the ramp to get on Ohio state route 4 that connects to I-75 south.

Interstate 75 south is our main route toward home.

I have been on this route in the past, but I had forgotten that Ohio Route 4 joined with I-75 heading toward Cincinnati, Ohio.  This image is south of exit 54 on I-75 after both highways cross the Miami River on separate bridges before this junction seen here.

Now I know why I did not remember Ohio route 4 running with I-75.  Their path together was about TWO MILES where the routes join and this exit where they split at I-75 Exit 52.  Interstate-75 heads south toward Cincinnati by itself.

We started looking for a good restaurant when we left the museum.  We found this Perkins Restaurant at I-75 Exit 44 at 2:37 PM at Miamisburg, Ohio.  We had good success at the Perkins in Dubuque, Iowa and thought we would try them again.  It worked out very well.  We were back in the car with the GPS indicating 3:22 PM when we headed out of the parking lot to get on I-75 southbound.

About SIX miles north of the Ohio River approaching Cincinnati, Interstate 75 has four lanes going both north and south as it approaches some major interchanges between here and the Ohio River which is the state line with Kentucky.

Interstate 75 Ohio Exit 4 is a major interchange for two Interstate routes and two US Routes.  The mid-western portion of I-74 begins at Exit 4 ahead going to Indianapolis, across Illinois, to its end in Bettendorf, Iowa.  We were on that route on the fourth day of our trip.  US 52 starts from Charleston, South Carolina and goes across the mid-west through Minot, ND to the Canadian Border town of Portal, ND.  US 27 begins in Miami, Florida and reaches north into central Michigan.  There is another segment of Interstate 74 in North Carolina, which maybe "Someday" connect with the segment that begins here in the Cincinnati area.

The major interchange for Cincinnati is just north of the Ohio River Bridge 2.8 miles ahead that carries I-75 and I-71 into Kentucky.  The roadway now has SIX southbound lanes after the merger of I-74 a few miles back.  We will be taking one of the two RIGHT lanes across that bridge into Kentucky.

This is the last important exit before the Ohio River Bridge.

Getting the big picture from above reveals the complex routes vying for a place on the two major bridges that cross the Ohio River at Cincinnati, Ohio into Kentucky going south.

This is the I-75 southbound approach to the Ohio River Bridge on the TOP LEVEL going to Kentucky.  There are three lanes coming NORTH on the SECOND LEVEL of this bridge.  This sign also indicates the 192 miles to the Tennessee state line from that exit on the Kentucky side of the river.

The state line is only 0.1 miles ahead inside the bridge.  There is no Kentucky welcome sign until reaching the first exit at the other side of the river.

Now we start counting down the miles to Tennessee on Interstate 75.

Our previous fuel stop was near I-75 Exit 212 in Michigan.  Now we are getting off in Northern Kentucky to get fuel again.

We pulled up to the front fuel pump at 4:24 PM just to the left of the blue truck seen here.  Our last fuel stop was near West Branch, Michigan just off I-75 at a Wal-Mart Murphy gas station. We traveled 435 miles to get here from there.  Google captured this image in April 2019.  We got out of here at 4:33 PM going south.

Just TWO miles south on I-75 is where I-71 heads southwest toward Louisville, KY.  For us today, I-75 is still our path toward home in Florida.

Every time I pass this exit, I think about an old friend and PILOT whose airplane paint scheme from his 1966 Piper Comanche B is on my Van's Aircraft RV-9A.  He lived in Cynthiana, Kentucky when I met him in the summer of 1971 only two weeks into my first job after three years in the US Army.  He built an AM/FM radio station in Cynthiana.  After I met him, he built a cable television system there. I processed his order for that CATV equipment from Jerrold Electronics, my first employer after I got out the US Army.  I also sold him his first commercial satellite antenna system a few years later.  There is also a large Toyota automobile assembly plant here on the East side of I-75.

While I was "driving" the Google Car across the I-75 bridge over the Kentucky River near Richmond, Kentucky, I noticed this sign driving up the hill toward Exit 97 for US 25 and US 421.  A Google search reveals the entire length of Interstate 75 in Kentucky honors 11 Tuskegee Airmen who were from Kentucky.  These are the kind of photos that I cannot take when cruising at 70 MPH.

The next stop was at the Tennessee Welcome Center just across the Kentucky State line in the southbound lane of I-75.  I needed to stop here to change the memory chip in my GPS to have the maps for the trip home to Georgia and Florida.  We arrived here at 6:59 PM and after a comfort stop, we were back in the car at 7:10 PM and heading south again.