SOUTHWEST NEWPORT
Apr. 2006
Nope, not Newport Beach, much to the chagrin of the Internet. Newport, KY, again! Betcha never would have guessed, huh?
This section of town features a residential neighborhood perched high atop a hill that soars some 300 feet above river level. It's hard to get to on a bike: From KY 9, I dragged my hulking velocipede up Overlook Drive, a road that incidentally was in laughably bad condition. (Off that street is Hillside Drive, and it's in far worse shape, if you can believe that.)
From Observation Avenue, we're looking into Covington. You can see a street with a rail overpass going over it. I'm assuming that's 15th Street. That's probably the overpass I hid under when it rained on the day I took my bike out to Latonia to pay a visit to that business that made a harassing phone call to my home. The water tower in Fort Wright is a speck on the horizon just to the left of the center of this photo. It's about 3 miles from here.
Now we're on Grandview Avenue, looking over Clifton Avenue. The water tower is now almost in the dead center of the picture. Slightly to the left of that you see a short white line just below the horizon. That's I-75 about at the Fort Mitchell curve! That's some 4 miles from here, but you can actually see cars moving on it, which makes it look much more interesting in real life.
This is still Grandview. I guess that's the steel mill you see in the valley, with the Licking River running alongside it. I'm not sure where the water tower on the horizon in the right-hand side of this photo is, because I don't know the exact location or angle of this shot. The thin white line under the horizon in the left side of the picture could be Taylor Mill Road, if we line it up with where the river appears, but that's quite a ways away.
This is just to the left of the previous shot, with some overlap. The horizontal line just to the right of the SPEED LIMIT 20 sign is the I-275 bridge over the Licking River, which is a good 3 miles away. This shows what a good view is provided just on Grandview alone: This street gives us a view of almost all of Covington except the far south. That could be useful...(cough) pirate radio transmitter (cough).
You know how maps have always shown that phantom Waterworks Road that runs from KY 9 to Moock Road, and how nobody's ever been able to find the road in real life? Boy George, I think I've finally found it! This one-lane road is off Aspen Court in Wilder. I doubt that it goes all the way to Moock Road though, and I wasn't about to find out, because it had a sign trumpeting about how it was private property - although I witnessed a man defying this Allowed Cloud by jogging there. I had to take a picture of this interesting little road anyway, because there were real estate signs up everywhere too, so this scene might be endangered.
I went home by returning north on Grandview and then down Fort Beech Road into Southgate. This stretch is unfortunately past the endangered stage now. On the topo map this road looks like it ran through an unspoiled wooded area, but now it's ruined by new suburban-style residential development.