American Discovery Trail: Long Lick Road

 

Little Smokies, Ohio

Photo credit: Ian Adams Photography

This week I finished the sixteenth segment of the trail, which ends at Long Lick Road. Who names these places? Anyway, after having walked all the way to the southern border of Ohio from close to Columbus, I now am south of Cincinatti and have to walk back north a ways as well as west, always west, long ways to go west still.

As promised last week, I passed two million steps and nine hundred miles this week. As I consider the 8.7 million steps remaining on this hike, two million seems like I am barely started, but to put it in some perspective, if I had walked toward San Francisco from my house instead of taking my current route, I would be past it and almost to Monterey. That's a lot of walking.

This month, I have averaged over five miles per day, or 11,000 steps, which is better than most previous months. This is because the weather is better and the evenings are lighter, and so I have started taking Arlo on longer evening walks than I did during the cold dark months.

This part of Ohio is called the "Little Smokies," because it looks similar to the Great Smokies, so they say, though the mountains are not as tall.

Unsurprisingly, when you look for images of "Long Lick," you get a variety of pictures. I blame the French.

The Counterfeit House. The house was built in 1840 and could be seen from the Ohio River. Riverboat captains received signals from the house regarding the availability of counterfeit bills and coins.