Sliced Bread and Kool-Aid!

(2025 Balloons and Beyond Ep 3)

Do you have childhood memories of bread slathered with layers of peanut butter and jelly, downed with glasses of icy cold cherry Kool-Aid?  Our red mustaches revealed what our tastebuds were feeling: ‘Ooh Yeah’!

But First…

We made it through another week and nearly 1000 miles in the beyond portion of our trip with no Pap mishaps.  For those of you who don’t know my bride, the title photo of Pat with a thumbs down scowl isn’t like her at all (unless I do something like drive Pap through a narrow tunnel).

Signs, Signs and More Signs 

Our continued route west took us thru Cincinnati OH.   The area is memorable to us as we had the only flat tire of our trip to Alaska in 2018 with Max and Pancake.  We visited the Ark Encounter attraction and the Creation Museum nearby in northern Kentucky.

This time we continued to the west side of Cincinnati for a tour of the American Sign Museum.  The museum holds more than 800 signs and other objects spanning over 100 years of American history. 

We walked along the museum’s cleverly designed indoor central avenue and were overwhelmed by a barrage of blinking bulbs, flashing lights, and bright colors: McDonalds, Holiday Inn, Phillips 66, Goodyear Tires, Frisch’s Big Boy, Rock City and many more.

Camp Washington or Skyline?

Near the museum we spotted our lunch stop for the day – Camp Washington Chili. 

We ordered bowls of spaghetti noodles, topped with meaty chili and cheddar cheese.  They added diced onions to mine, and gave us each several small bags of oyster crackers as a garnish.

Our selections were delicious – the chili was mild and the proportions of toppings were perfect!

Now we have an unfortunate dilemma: friends from Cincinnati in our church fellowship group served Skyline chili several times over the years when our group joined them for dinner.  Skyline chili is said to be a little different, more saucy with a mild undertone of cinnamon.

Apparently, there is a big fan base for each style of chili.  How will we explain that we may have gone over to the chili dark side?  

Covered Bridges and ‘Gorge’ous Hikes

In Indiana, we camped several nights near Rockville. 

^{Different ways of visiting Rockville – motor cycles at the Thirty Six Saloon and an Amish family on their way to town}

The area is noted for 31 covered bridges. We learned while walking around the town’s central square that more than two million people attend the town’s 10-day Covered Bridge Festival in October.  We could not fathom the crowds as thousands of covered-bridge geeks follow established routes through the countryside to see the bridges. 

^{Some of the covered bridges near Rockville}

We visited three bridges and found them to be interesting relics of the past.  They are nicely restored and in very good condition.  The overhead clearance of the bridges is about 10 feet. With Pap being 12 feet tall, this was definitely a NADA moment.

The next day we visited Turkey Run SP. 

The highlight of our visit was hiking a couple of the beautiful trails that follow sandstone cliffs along Sugar Creek and traverse deep side ravines.  The park has 11 trails from .5 mile to 3 miles that range from easy to very rugged. 

We hiked a 1.7 mile very rugged trail that included lots of ups and downs, three 20-foot ladders, hundreds of steps and a final slippery descent down a stream bed back to Sugar Creek.

We were tired after the hikes, and have an appreciation of the beauty of the area. 

Our westward quest yielded a couple interesting RabbiTRAILS not far off our planned route.

Sliced Bread

On July 7, 1928, sliced bread was first offered for sale in Chillicothe, MO when Chillicothe Baking Company began using a bread slicing machine invented by Otto Rohwedder.  The pre-sliced bread was placed on the bakery’s shelves and instantly changed the way consumers bought bread.  The five feet long and two feet high machine was turned down by numerous bakeries before being offered to the Chillicothe bakery’s owner, Frank Bench. 

Today, the building pictured is a museum and visitor center, and was unfortunately closed on the day of our visit.

Ooh Yeah – It’s Kool-Aid!

We continued to Hastings, NE where we visited the Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History.  There, among buggies and cars, guns and a large variety of animal and bird displays, we found what we had come to see – the Kool-Aid:  Discover the Dream exhibit.

Hastings is the birthplace of Kool-Aid. The wonderfully sweet fruit-flavored soft drink that kids (of all ages!) enjoy was the brainchild of Edwin Perkins. Pursuing his dream through hard work and ingenious marketing. Perkins created and sold many products, but in 1927 he developed Kool-Aid.

Perkins created an earlier version of Kool-Aid, called Fruit Smack, in his mother’s kitchen.  Once in production, it was corked and sold in bottles, which was very messy.   A powdered drink was more appealing to consumers, and in 1927 Perkins’ company created Kool-Ade, later renamed Kool-Aid.

Next Week

Pat’s brother joins us in Missouri.  After visiting their aunt and uncle near Kansas City, we spend five days following RabbiTRAILS across Nebraska before arriving in Saratoga, WY. 

Our travels include the Strategic Air Command, runzas, Golden Spike rail yard, Chimney Rock and some Rocky Mountain seafood. 

See you next week!