Jeffersonville, IN
Operating at 347 Spring Street since April 1891, and by the store's own telling the same family has made the candy for over 130 years, on century-old equipment you can watch run. The signatures deserve their separate names: hand-made cinnamon Red Hots from Gus Schimpff Sr.'s 1880s handwritten recipe, the signature since opening day; caramel-covered Modjeskas, the Kentuckiana marshmallow classic named for actress Helena Modjeska; and hard candy fish in a dozen-plus flavors. The 1950s soda fountain under the original tin ceiling serves lunch, soups, sandwiches, chili, and proper malts and sodas, and the candy museum next door is free. Open Monday through Saturday from 10, closed Sundays; Saturday can close early, so make it a weekday or a Saturday lunch. After, walk the Big Four Bridge across the Ohio into Louisville.
Right across the Ohio River from Louisville, Kentucky. The approach offers stunning views of the downtown Louisville skyline and the Big Four Bridge (now a pedestrian bridge connecting Louisville to Jeffersonville). The Falls of the Ohio State Park is minutes away with one of the largest exposed Devonian fossil beds in the world — 386 million years old, accessible at low water. Jeffersonville's riverfront downtown has been beautifully restored with restaurants and shops along the river. Pair Clark Regional with a Louisville visit — many pilots prefer JVY over crowded SDF.
At Clarksville and Jeffersonville, on the Indiana bank of the Ohio River across from Louisville, the river drops about 26 feet over a two-mile stretch of rapids — the only natural break in navigation on the entire 981-mile Ohio. The Falls of the Ohio decided where cities grew, because every downbound boat had to stop and portage or wait for high water. And at low water it reveals something extraordinary: one of the largest naturally exposed Devonian fossil beds in the world. The beds are about 390 million years old — a coral reef laid down when this ground was a shallow tropical sea near the equator. At low water, usually late summer and fall, hundreds of acres of fossil limestone emerge, dense with corals, brachiopods, crinoids, and trilobites preserved where they lived. The Falls of the Ohio State Park interpretive center sits on the bluff above the beds; the fossil flats are open to walk when the river allows. The Falls also anchor a piece of frontier and expedition history. George Rogers Clark staged from the Falls before his 1779 capture of Vincennes, and the town of Clarksville on the Indiana bank carries his name. William Clark met Meriwether Lewis at the Falls of the Ohio in October 1803; here they recruited the "Nine Young Men from Kentucky" before starting down the river — the formal beginning of the Lewis and Clark Expedition''s overland journey. A mile upstream in Jeffersonville, the Howard Steamboat Museum occupies the 1894 mansion of the Howard family, whose shipyard built the grandest steamboats on the western rivers for nearly a century. The mansion was built by the shipyard''s own craftsmen with steamboat-grade woodwork; the museum holds models, builder''s drawings, and the story of the Ohio River packet era. The McAlpine Locks move river barges around the drop; the working lock chambers are absorbing to watch from above.
The only major falls on the entire 981-mile Ohio River. Before the McAlpine Locks were built, this 26-foot drop was the reason Louisville exists — all river commerce had to portage around the falls, creating a natural trading post. The falls are now partially submerged by the dam, but at low water the rapids are visible and impressive. The lock system handling massive river barges is fascinating to watch from above. George Rogers Clark's expedition launched from here.
Strung along West Main Street on the downtown riverfront is Louisville's Museum Row, and two stops earn a pilot's attention. The Muhammad Ali Center, a six-story tribute opened in 2005, honors the Louisville-born heavyweight who called himself The Greatest. A few doors down, the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory has made the bats since the brand came home in 1996 — and you'll spot it long before you can read the sign, because a 120-foot steel baseball bat leans against the building like a giant left it there. Both sit on the Ohio River bank, your orientation line back into KSDF to the south.
When you taxi into KLOU you're landing at Kentucky's first airport (1923) — and one of America's oldest continuously operating airfields. The 1929 Art Deco Administration Building still serves as the terminal. Charles Lindbergh visited months after his Paris flight. WWII saw the field become a major Army Air Forces training base — over 5,000 pilots earned wings here. The hangars and original ramp configuration largely survive intact. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Pair with dinner at Bistro Le Relais in the same historic building.