CINCINNATI'S LUNKEN AIRPORT AREA
Apr. 2007
PART 2
Picking up where I leaved off on the Lunken Airport trail. The trail that's open to the public goes off to the left here at a 90-degree angle, where it goes down the slope that the sign in Part 1 tried to stop me from biking down. Straight ahead is what looks like an abandoned trail. That path is marked as an unpaved road on the 1983 topo map. The gate was open, so it was tempting to go back there. But it would have been more tempting if the gate was closed.
More info about Bunkin' Lunken: According to a sign, the main trail around Lunken Airport was partially gobbled up by the golf course in 2005. The trail comes out along Wilmer Avenue and parallels the street to the Land of Make-Believe, a children's playground. When I was a youngster, I thought it was so funny when ELO came out with that song that said, "Come along with me...To a Land of Make-Believe..." But that was more because it sounded like they were singing about something from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The playground used to be characterized by a large rocket, but that's long gone.
This is going southeast on Beechmont Avenue, which carries OH 125. From a complicated junction with Wilmer Avenue, OH 125 runs on an earthen berm along the edge of the airport and over the Little Miami River. One sign marks this stretch as Bike Route B, but there's an Allowed Cloud against pedestrians. (Why???)
Wouldn't ya know it? That abandoned trail pictured above comes out here on OH 125, just northwest of the Little Miami.
OH 32 splits here from OH 125 at a trumpet-shaped interchange (though neither road is a freeway). From OH 125 we're looking down at the ramps that form OH 32. Guide signs boast that OH 32 goes to Batavia. As my parents used to say: You better behavia when you're in Batavia!
Heading northwest again on OH 125 on the stretch that crosses the Little Miami. I have no idea what those weird lights hanging above the road are for. You can see that there's a ripped-up, waterlogged school textbook laying along the road. If that book was from, say, Brossart, it was probably destroyed by a student who stole it from a schoolmate that the school had loaned it to - and the school probably charged the victim of this theft the cost of the book, yet continued using the ruined book the following year after finding it along the road.
Another "drought" photo! Off the east side of Wooster Road there's this park. But in this picture the park is closed because the road to it is flooded by a branch of the Little Miami. It shows you how rainy the past few years have been, because Wooster Road really isn't even that close to the Little Miami itself here.
Facing southwest on Wooster Road. The whole stretch of Wooster Road southwest of US 50 is in bad condition. I was actually sort of dumped onto this road involuntarily, because it meets OH 125 opposite Wilmer Avenue and the entire junction has such a bizarre design. To go from Wooster to Wilmer, you use a weird ramp under OH 125 that goes a block out of the way through a residential area. This ramp is horrible for bicyclists. I made it as far as the junction with US 50 on Wooster Road.
Eastern Avenue and Delta Avenue are sort of merged onto the same roadbed here, as the road forms this underpass beneath the rail line that parallels US 52. This is where Eastern Avenue splits from US 52, and we're facing towards The Big Five-Two. This underpass smelled like grape Bubble Yum.
Last but not least, another flood picture. This is at a park along the Ohio River. I think this is at the bottom of St. Peters Street. The river has engulfed those weatherbeaten trees and part of the roadway. You can see the skyline of downtown 3½ miles in the distance.