OHIO HOMECOMING LOOP

Southeastern Ohio back roads offer a wealth of natural views. home would often involve a stop in Nelsonville at the Rocky Boot Factory Outlet in the old brick factory building on the town’ s main drag. When I first visited the outlet store years ago, it still shared space with a taxidermist’ s operations and dusty boxes of boots were stacked semi-randomly on bare metal shelves. But when I happened to find my size, I walked out with an unbelievable deal on Gore-Tex boots.

Today, the taxidermist is long gone and the old factory building is a well-lit four-story store that sells not just shoes and boots, but also blankets, shirts, socks, pocketknives and the sort of cute little animal statues my wife likes to put on a shelf. There’ s even a café. Incredible bargains are fewer, but dig deep into the remainders and they’ re still there.

Leaving Nelsonville, I succumb momentarily to the convenience of U. S. 33. This wide-open four-lane with its maddeningly unnecessary 55-mph speed limit and heavy attention from the Ohio State Highway Patrol serves only to get me to Athens, where old trees tower alongside the brick dormitories of my alma mater, Ohio University.

Local knowledge again spares me from the newest section of U. S. 33 just beyond Athens, a straight two-lane recently plowed through the southeastern Ohio hills to replace a 12- mile stretch of tangled roadway through woods, farms and tiny communities of a dozen or so houses each. The old road is still out there, with its signature blind 90-degree turns, but now it’ s called

Favorite Rides Fall 2016 | Page 69

OHIO HOMECOMING LOOP