Parkersburg, WV
Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Airport sits twelve miles east of Parkersburg on a low ridge near Mineral Wells, with a single 6,760-foot runway 03/21. Parkersburg sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Little Kanawha rivers. The defining attraction is Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park — a 500-acre island in the middle of the Ohio River, accessible only by sternwheeler, where in 1798 Irish immigrant Harman Blennerhassett built a Palladian mansion that was the most extravagant private home west of the Alleghenies. In 1805 the disgraced former Vice President Aaron Burr arrived; Burr and Blennerhassett organized an expedition that Thomas Jefferson came to believe was a plot to split off the western states and invade Mexico. Federal forces seized the island and arrested Blennerhassett in 1806; Burr was tried for treason in 1807 and acquitted. Blennerhassett never recovered his fortune; the mansion burned down in 1811. The reconstructed mansion opened in 1991.
You're at Ohio University's own field, Snyder Field, in the hills of Athens. OU is the oldest university in the Northwest Territory, chartered in 1804 — its lineage runs back to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and its promise that "schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." The College Green at the campus's heart, with Manasseh Cutler Hall facing true north, is a National Historic Landmark. Across the valley stand the Ridges — the former Athens Lunatic Asylum, a sprawling Kirkbride-plan hospital now owned by the university and home to an art museum. Athens is deep Appalachian-foothill country, eighty miles southeast of Columbus.
John Glenn — first American to orbit the Earth, Marine combat pilot, four-term U.S. senator, and at 77 the oldest person to fly in space — grew up in New Concord, just east of Zanesville. The Sears kit house his father assembled in 1923 has been restored as the John & Annie Glenn Museum, complete with costumed interpreters and a one-third-scale Friendship 7 capsule. Glenn met Annie here as a child; she went on to become a noted advocate for people with speech disabilities. His name rides on the Columbus airport and his statue stands in the Statehouse, but this small town is where the dreams started — fitting ground for an app about flying.
Few towns hand a pilot a better landmark than Zanesville. Where the Licking River meets the Muskingum, the road doesn't cross on one bridge — it crosses on a Y. The Y-Bridge is a three-legged span that meets midstream, so you can drive onto it and come off on the same bank you started from. There has been a Y-bridge here since 1814; the current one, the fifth, dates to 1902 and is on the National Register. Aviator Amelia Earhart is said to have called Zanesville the most recognizable city in the country because of it. The town sits on Zane's Trace, the pioneer road that ran from Wheeling all the way to Maysville, Kentucky.
Ohio's most spectacular natural area — Carboniferous-era sandstone gorges with hemlock forests, waterfalls, and rock shelters. The famous spots: Old Man's Cave, Cedar Falls, Ash Cave (a massive 700-foot rock recess), Conkles Hollow (a 200-foot deep gorge), and Rock House (a true cave with windows in the cliff). From the air, the gorges cut through the rolling hills like green canyons. Spectacular fall color mid-October — one of Ohio's peak autumn destinations.