Portsmouth/Minford, OH
Old-style country cooking beside the runway at Greater Portsmouth, in a terminal that handled scheduled airline flights in an earlier life. The locals have used the pilots' old joke about this place for a generation: fly-in visitors burn a tank of fuel just to land for lunch. Breakfast is served all day, and the hits are real: sausage gravy and biscuits, beans and cornbread, polish sausage and cabbage, the Skyline Burger (Big Boy-style, say those who remember), homemade meatloaf, coleslaw people call the best they have eaten, and a peanut butter pie worth the trip alone. Aviation memorabilia on the walls, big windows on the runway. Open seven days, 7 am to 8 pm; a rare on-field diner that actually serves dinner.
On a hilltop just south of Minford on State Route 335, ten miles northeast of downtown Portsmouth. The original Portsmouth airport, dedicated around 1928 down by the Ohio River, kept flooding and fogging in; this site was acquired in the 1950s and the runway built up to its current 5,001 feet. One asphalt runway (18/36) with hill obstructions a mile south and a half-mile northwest — no line of sight between the runway ends. Owned by the Scioto County Airport Authority. 100LL plus Jet A, courtesy car for transients, light-but-loyal pilot community. Non-towered. Clearance delivery via Huntington ATCT.
Where the Scioto meets the Ohio, Portsmouth turned its flood defenses into art. Along roughly 2,000 feet of concrete floodwall, muralist Robert Dafford painted some fifty panels — 2,000 years of Ohio Valley history, from the Hopewell mound builders and the Shawnee through the steamboat era — one of the largest single-artist mural projects anywhere. (Dafford is the same hand behind the floodwall murals down the river at Maysville and Paducah, Kentucky.) Behind the town rise the ridges of Shawnee State Forest, the "Little Smokies of Ohio" and one of the state's largest forests. Greater Portsmouth's airport sits up in Minford, northeast of the river.
Ashland anchors the south end of US-23, the stretch Kentucky named the Country Music Highway because no road on Earth has produced more million-selling country stars per mile — Loretta Lynn, the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Dwight Yoakam, Patty Loveless, Tom T. Hall, all from these counties. Ashland itself is the hometown of the Judds and Billy Ray Cyrus, and its 1931 Paramount Arts Center — a jewel-box movie palace — is where the "Achy Breaky Heart" video was filmed in 1992. The town sits in the corner where Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia meet on the Ohio River.
A 1,348-foot earthwork in the shape of a serpent swallowing an egg, built by ancient Native Americans (Adena or Fort Ancient cultures, dating contested between 320 BC and 1070 AD). The largest serpent effigy in the world. The site sits on a meteorite impact crater, which may have inspired its location. Best viewed from the air or from the on-site observation tower. The effigy aligns with the summer solstice sunset and may have functioned as an astronomical calendar.
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.