Wapakoneta, OH
Wapakoneta landmark since 1893, in Neil Armstrong's hometown. The hand-carved white oak back bar was built the year the place opened, a decade before Kitty Hawk, and moved with the cafe across the street in 1962; a late-1930s menu still hangs opposite it. Order the breaded tenderloin; regulars call it the best in town, and a lunch special board runs daily. Weekday lunch and Friday night are the reliable windows; Saturday is evening only; closed Sundays. Pair it with the Armstrong Air & Space Museum on the way into town, where Armstrong's F-5D Skylancer and the Gemini 8 capsule he flew are on display.
Named for Neil Armstrong — the first human to walk on the Moon. Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta in 1930. The Armstrong Air & Space Museum is just a few minutes from the field — a striking dome-shaped museum housing Armstrong's Gemini 8 capsule, his pre-flight Apollo 11 training suit, and one of the few moon rocks on public display. The annual Summer Moon Festival each July (around the Apollo 11 anniversary) brings the town to life. This is a proper aviation pilgrimage stop.
A striking dome-shaped museum in Neil Armstrong's hometown of Wapakoneta, OH. Houses Armstrong's Gemini 8 spacecraft, his pre-flight Apollo 11 training suit, an actual Moon rock, and an F5D Skylancer Armstrong flew as a NASA test pilot. Operated by the Ohio History Connection. The Summer Moon Festival each July (around the Apollo 11 anniversary, July 20) brings the town alive with concerts and reenactments. Smaller than the Air Force Museum but more focused — and Armstrong is buried at sea, so this is the closest thing to a memorial.
The largest inland lake in Ohio (13,500 acres) — built in the 1840s as a reservoir for the Miami and Erie Canal, briefly the world's largest man-made lake. Today the lake is a recreation hub for west-central Ohio. The surrounding Mercer County is heavily German Catholic, and the "Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches" — over a dozen 19th-century churches with prominent crosses, visible for miles across the flat farmland. Maria Stein, Saint Henry, Cassella, and Minster all have stunning historic churches.
One of America's most active warbird restoration shops, located at Grimes Field in Urbana, OH. The signature project is the B-17 Flying Fortress "Champaign Lady" — a years-long restoration to flying status. Visitors can watch the work in progress in the open hangar. The museum also has a B-25 Mitchell, several T-6 Texans, and other aircraft. Open weekly with active volunteer mechanics happy to talk shop. A must-visit for warbird fans.
This quiet Union County field sits in the middle of an unlikely automotive capital. In 1982 Honda built the first Japanese-owned car plant on American soil here at Marysville — the first US-made Accord, "USA 001," rolled off the line on November 1 that year — and the complex has since grown into Ohio's largest employer. Northwest of the plant, near East Liberty, lies the Transportation Research Center: a 4,500-acre proving ground born from Ohio State engineering research in the early 1970s, anchored by a 7.5-mile high-speed test oval that is a genuine landmark from the air — a vast banked ring scribed into the farmland.