I’m going to take a little break from my Nashville Cemetery
Tour and get back on the road. Last year in July 2025, I took a weeklong trip
through the upper Midwest. During this trip I was able to scratch a few sites
off my bucket list.
This trip took play from July 5-11, 2025, and allowed me to visit
5 states, including, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. This will be my first visit to Michigan,
leave only Wisconsin, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, in the lower 48 that I
haven’t visited.
I don’t usually like to travel on holiday weekend, but due
to some scheduling issues, I made an exception and planned on leaving home on
Saturday Morning, July 5th.
This was right in the heart of the Independence Day weekend. For the
next couple of days, I have no doubt that traffic will be terrible.
Today is Saturday, July 5th and
it is get away day and it’s all about miles. I wanted to be on the road by 8 a.m. In order
for me to feed the cats (Ollie, Nugget and Jasper) and feed and walk Chaos, I
was up at 7: a.m. I think Ollie and Nugget know something is up because rather
than eating they both are following me around. They hate to see me go and truth
be told, as much as I enjoy traveling, I hate to leave them for an extended
period.
Well, it took longer than planned for
Chaos to do his business and for me to finish packing and I didn’t leave until
8:20 a.m. After a little over an hour and 10 minutes later, I made my first
stop of the day at the West Virginia Welcome Center in Princeton, West
Virginia.
The Princeton Welcome Center is right off
Interstate 77 at the southern end of the West Virginia Turnpike. I always stop
here before heading north on the Turnpike because there aren’t many places to
stop between here and the Northern End in Charleston.
After a quick 10-minute stop at the
Welcome Center, it was time to head north on the Turnpike. The West Virginia Turnpike is a toll road, if
you travel the full 88-miles from Princeton to Charleston you will be required
to stop at three toll plazas spaced about 30 miles apart. The toll at each plaza is $4.50 for a total
of $13.50.
The Turnpike is a fairly good road between
Princeton and Beckley. But once you get north of Beckley, the road is curvy,
rough, and bumpy. You would think that for the cost of the tolls the turnpike
authority could keep it in better shape.
I managed to navigate the turnpike without
incident and zip around Charleston. As I head west on Interstate 64 the Gold
Dome of the West Virginia State Capitol is glistening in the sunlight off to my
left.
After 20-minutes later I cross the Kanawha
River and leave Interstate 64 and head north on U. S. 35. Like I said, today is
all about miles and stops are few and far between. About an hour after traveling through downtown Charleston,
I crossed the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, West Virginia. As I cross the
bridge, I leave West Virginia and say hello to the State of Ohio.
As I am traveling up on U. S. Route 35,
the Driver attention alert on my Honda Accord, started telling me that it was
time for a break. So, I decided to pull into the Ohio Rest Area on U. S.
Highway 35 near Ray, Ohio. I looked at my watch, and it has been exactly
3-hours since my last stop at the Welcome Center in Princeton.
About an hour after leaving the rest area,
I pulled into Wendy’s in Jeffersonville, Ohio for lunch before pushing on to
Dayton where I have reservation for the Night. I had anticipated encountering
Heavy Traffic throughout the day, especially on the West Virginia Turnpike. But
surprisingly, traffic has moved at or close to the speed limit all the way.
As a result, I arrived in Dayton way
earlier than I expected, and I can’t check into my hotel for a couple of hours.
So, I decided to visit Woodland Cemetery which was founded in the early 1840’s.
It began with 40 acres and over the years has expanded to a little more than
200 acres today.
Woodland is the final Resting Place of some of the area’s
most notable citizens, including the Wright Brothers. My first stop was just
inside the gates of the cemetery at the Grave of humorist and columnist Erma
Bombeck.
For more than 30 years, Erma Bombeck chronicled life's
absurdities in a syndicated column carried by hundreds of newspapers. She was
born here in Dayton, where at the age of fifteen, she was hired by the Dayton
Herald as a copygirl.
When Shirley Temple came to Dayton for a movie premier, Erma
interviewed her and the story was published on the feature page of the
newspaper. That day marked the beginning of her writing career.
She enrolled at the University of Ohio then transferred to
Dayton University where she graduated. The Dayton Journal-Herald welcomed her
back and she was assigned to the women's section. She began writing a column
resulting in syndication appearing in thirty-eight papers the first year. Five
years later, her column, "At Wit's End," was staple in 500, and at
the time of her death, it appeared in more than 800 newspapers
Erma Bombeck passed away on August 22, 1996, from the
complication of kidney disease. At Erma’s funeral mass, her friend and former
neighbor Phil Donahue delivered the eulogy. She was buried here in Woodland
Cemetery, where a 29,000-pound boulder from her Arizona Home marks her grave.
After visiting the grave of Erma Bombeck,
I continued to explore the cemetery, stopping briefly at the grave of John
Balsley. Who is John Balsey, you ask? Well, he was a carpenter by trade, and is
best known for inventing the folding step ladder.
I also stopped and paid my respects to the
Ritty Brothers. They opened the Pony House saloon in Dayton in 1871. They
suspected that employees were not accounting for all of the saloon’s sales. So,
In 1878, they came up with an idea of making a machine that would count sales
at the saloon, along with keeping track of the money and the amount of each
sale. Their first few attempts were total failures until they improved on their
ideas by adding a paper roll to it so it could record each transaction in
dollars and cents.
The Brothers filed for and received a
patent for their cash register in 1879. Eventually they sold the patent for
their invention to John Patterson for $6,500. Patterson mass produced the Ritty Brothers
Cash Register and went on to found the National Cash Register (NCR), which is
still in business today. John Patterson is buried in this same cemetery just a
short distance away.
Probably the most visited graves in
Woodland Cemetery are in Section 101. It is there I found the Wright Family Plot
where Orville and Wilbur Wright are buried. The Wright Brothers operated a
bicycle shop in Dayton. It was in their bicycle shop that the two brothers
began experimenting with aeronautics and set about inventing a device that
would not only fly but take off and land.
After years of experimenting, the brothers
took their invention to the Sand Dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. It was
There on December 17, 1903, that Orville and Wilbur Wright accomplished the
first sustained self-propelled controlled flight. The airplane and the age of
aviation was born.
Wilbur Wright lived just 10 more years
after those first flights in North Carolina, dying at the age of 45 on May 30,
1912, from Typhoid Fever.
Orville lived for another 36 years and was
able to see their invention soar to new heights. He died at the age of 76 on
January 30, 1948, from a heart attack. The Wright Brothers are buried in the
Family Plot with their parents and their sister Katie.
The visit to the Wright Brothers Graves
wrapped up my visit to Woodland Cemetery and it was time to head to my hotel on
the north side of Dayton. It took me about 20 minutes to make the drive through
the end of the day traffic.
I arrived at the Drury Inn & Suites –
Dayton North at about 4:45 p.m. and quickly checked into my room. I have yet to
have a bad experience at a Drury Hotel. The employees are so friendly and
professional. Everyone goes out of their way to ensure that you have a perfect
stay.
The 5:30 kickback featured BBQ sliders
with a baked Potato and salad. This was a really good supper. I don’t think I
mentioned but each Drury offers free adult beverages during the Kickback hours.
When you check-in they will give you a drink ticket with your Key. All you do
is present the ticket to the bartender to receive your complimentary beverage.
I don’t drink but it is a nice feature for those who do.
Traffic today was nowhere near as bad at I
had expected and I arrived in Dayton Way earlier than planned. Not a bad start
to this little adventure.
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