Hamilton, OH
North of Cincinnati, KHAO serves the southwestern Ohio corporate community. Hamilton itself is the seat of Butler County and home to the Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park — over 60 monumental sculptures across 300 acres of rolling hills, viewable from low altitude. The Great Miami River runs through downtown.
Hamilton calls itself the City of Sculpture, and Pyramid Hill is why. On 470 acres of rolling hills above the Great Miami River, philanthropist Harry Wilks gathered more than seventy monumental outdoor sculptures — granite forms twelve to eighteen feet tall, welded-steel towers, one work compared to Stonehenge — and donated the land as a nonprofit park in 1997. It's one of the largest sculpture parks in the country. The Pyramid House on the grounds holds ancient Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Egyptian antiquities dating back to 1550 BCE. Butler County's airport is just east, between here and the Cincinnati-Dayton corridor.
One of America's most beautiful river cities. The Ohio River makes a dramatic bend around downtown Cincinnati, with the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge (1866) — Roebling's prototype for the Brooklyn Bridge — connecting Cincinnati to Covington, KY. The downtown skyline includes the iconic Carew Tower (1930) and the modern Great American Tower. Smale Riverfront Park along the water has been beautifully developed. Approach to KLUK takes you up the river valley with the city rising on the bluffs.
This is a pilgrimage field. Clermont County Airport is better known as Sporty's — it's where Hal Shevers built Sporty's Pilot Shop, which started in 1961 with handheld radios sold from the trunk of his car and grew into the world's largest pilot shop and one of general aviation's great institutions. (Shevers learned to fly in the Purdue Flying Club — the same Purdue whose airport anchors a pin up in Indiana.) The field is home to Sporty's headquarters, Sporty's Academy — the Part 141 school that runs the University of Cincinnati's professional pilot program — and the famous Saturday-morning fly-in cookout. East of Cincinnati, it's exactly the kind of place a cross-country ought to detour for.
Home to the original 1905 Wright Flyer III — the world's first practical airplane. While Kitty Hawk gets the headlines for the 1903 flight, it was the 1905 Flyer III that proved sustained, controlled, practical flight was possible — the airplane stayed up for 39 minutes and flew 24 miles around Huffman Prairie. Designated by Congress as a National Historic Landmark. The 65-acre Carillon Historical Park surrounds the aircraft with the Deeds Carillon (the largest carillon in Ohio) and exhibits on Dayton's industrial history (NCR, Wright brothers, Charles Kettering, parachute invention). Often overlooked next to the Air Force Museum but essential for any aviation history fan.