Huntingburg, IN
Family-run since 1961, when Larry and Betty Hanselman bought the tavern on this spot and started collecting German recipes from the neighbors; the full restaurant was born in 1971, and their children run it now. Sauerbraten, schnitzel, two-inch chops, the Wunderbar salad bar, and a bar deep in imported German beer; the crown jewel is the Glockenspiel, first built in 1988 after the founder's research trips to Germany and newly rebuilt with sixteen bells, a conductor, and three dancing figures. Reservations taken all week; closed Sundays. Pair it with League Stadium in Huntingburg, minutes from the field: the 1894 ballpark rebuilt for the 1992 film A League of Their Own, where the Dubois County Bombers still play summer ball among theater seats salvaged from Atlanta's old stadium. Pure Americana on the ground.
Gateway to Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial — Abraham Lincoln spent ages 7-21 just south of here near Lincoln City, IN, where his mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln is buried. The "Bench" (a movie with Tom Hanks featured this region too) was filmed nearby. The town is known for its preserved 19th-century downtown German architecture from the original settlers. The "League of Their Own" baseball stadium scenes were filmed at Huntingburg League Stadium — still standing as a baseball landmark.
Abraham Lincoln lived here from age 7 to 21 (1816-1830). His mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln is buried here. The living historical farm operates as it would have in the 1820s. From the air, look for the memorial building (a semicircular cloister) and the cabin site clearing in the surrounding hardwood forest. Lincoln left Indiana by flatboat down the Ohio River — you can trace his route from the air flying south to the river.
When it was completed in 1902, this 200-foot free-span dome was the largest in the world — bigger than the Pantheon in Rome, bigger than St. Peter's Basilica. It held the record until the Houston Astrodome in 1965. Called the 'Eighth Wonder of the World,' the hotel fell into disrepair but was restored in 2007. The circular dome is clearly visible from 3000ft. The dome is most photogenic from the south, with the valley's forested hills as backdrop.
Bill Monroe — the inventor of bluegrass music — was born in Rosine, Kentucky, just east of Owensboro. The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum downtown tells the genre's story from its 1940s origins to today. Across town, mutton barbecue (slow-smoked sheep, a Western Kentucky regional specialty) reigns at Moonlite, Old Hickory, and other spots. Owensboro's annual International Bar-B-Q Festival each May draws 80,000+ to celebrate burgoo (the traditional regional stew) and mutton. From the air, the Ohio River curves dramatically around the city.
The hills of south-central Indiana sit on a thick bed of Mississippian limestone, and where rainwater has worked down through it for hundreds of thousands of years it has hollowed out one of the densest concentrations of caves in the eastern United States. This is karst country: sinkholes pock the fields, streams vanish into the ground and resurface miles away, and beneath the surface run miles of mapped passage. Marengo Cave, found in 1883 by two children, is a US National Natural Landmark and one of the most decorated show caves in the Midwest — dense with flowstone, soda straws, and the draperies and "cave coral" that form where mineral-laden water drips over millennia. It has been operated as a show cave continuously for well over a century. A few miles south, the Wyandotte Caves are among the largest cave systems in Indiana, with passages worked by Native peoples for thousands of years to mine chert and aragonite; "Monument Mountain," a huge underground breakdown pile inside Big Wyandotte, is one of the tallest underground features open to visitors anywhere. The same limestone built the surface country. The Mitchell Plateau quarries supplied the Salem limestone that faced the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, and the National Cathedral — the Bedford limestone belt runs through the same country. Spring Mill State Park, with its cave-fed gristmill and its boat-tour caves, sits in the same karst belt to the N.