Hidden America: Columbus, Ohio

I've spent almost my entire life living on the east coast of the United States and I can safely say the vast majority of people in that region have no interest whatsoever in anything that goes on between the two coasts. From what I've heard, the west coast is pretty much the same. Even when I lived for a few years in St. Louis I never saw the American Midwest as a place I particularly wanted to explore or understand better. Of course my mindset changed once my primary interest became travel and I started to approach new places with a more constructive mindset. One early epiphany was Portland, Oregon which of course is a west coast city but is hardly recognized as a travel destination. Portland was so amazing that I realized that the United States was probably full of unheralded treasures and my family should devote the same attention to it that we do to Europe and Asia. That suspicion was confirmed by highly rewarding trips to cities with little renown such as Atlanta, Houston, and Milwaukee. Even the cities that I did not find exceptional such as Chicago, Dallas, and Denver were still worthy of the visit. Ultimately I decided that I wanted to visit every major city in the United States, which I classified as every city with a metropolitan area population roughly over a million. Why roughly? Because I consider Albuquerque and New Orleans with metro populations just under a million to be major cities but not Rochester or Hartford with metro populations slightly over a million. I might be wrong about Rochester and Hartford but one has to draw the line somewhere. Including the most recent trip I've been to forty-two of the fifty-four cities on my list, with thirty-one of them specifically for travel purposes with my family. That means I'm getting quite close to accomplishing my goal, although I will need to revisit important cities like Washington DC and Pittsburgh that I passed though too long ago to really remember.

Another good thing about traveling in the United States is that it is a lot easier to find things that are exciting for the kids, from water parks to science museums to local fairs. These things exist in Europe and Asia as well but not to the same degree and they are often difficult to manage logistically. The United States is generally optimized for appealing, inexpensive entertainment for children and teenagers. We've started a little tradition of having a short trip at the end of the summer to reward the kids for putting up with our long early summer trips to Europe and Asia, and road trips in the USA have proven to be the perfect combination of fun and relative simplicity. This summer we had twelve days between the end of their two week session of day camp and the beginning of the new school year which was the perfect window of time to explore an area of the United States that I had long been coveting, the Cincinnati-Louisville-Indianapolis triangle that covered three of the most disregarded states in the country. I had driven through Ohio and Indiana before without stopping and I had passed through Kentucky on a long-ago road trip with my parents, but it was really more like I had never been to those states at all. When I discovered that the Ohio state fair would be in Columbus at the very beginning of our trip we decided to add that city into the itinerary as well, even though it hadn't previously been on my list.

Our departure from Ft. Lauderdale airport to Columbus wasn't very eventful, although two weeks hadn't been enough time to really recover from the six week Italy trip before embarking on this new adventure. Our plan was to drive the forty miles from Miami to the airport in our own minivan with a reservation in hand for a hotel parking lot not far away. This would avoid the extremely high prices for an XL ride share and for parking at the airport for twelve days. I thought I had given us plenty of time but when I plugged the destination into Maps I realized I hadn't accounted fully for the increased traffic of rush hour. As soon as we got on the road the previously clear skies suddenly darkened and a massive thunderstorm unleashed in a very typical South Florida manner. I also made the unpleasant discovery that the Google reviews of the parking service were horrendous, with many people complaining that the shuttle never arrived to take them from the hotel parking lot to the airport. We made it to the lot about twenty minutes after I had planned, two hours prior to our departure. I called for the shuttle as Mei Ling had her finger hovering over the Uber app ready to submit a ride request. Surprisingly enough the shuttle driver was there within three minutes and we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare for a domestic flight. The sun was setting when our Spirit flight took off on time at eight o'clock and I watched the last rays of light disappear behind the clouds.

Picking up the rental car at the Columbus airport was thankfully as easy as it usually is in the States. It was a black Ford Edge with a ton of trunk space. We grabbed a snack for the kids and didn't get to our Airbnb until midnight. The surroundings were a little gritty but our block was pleasant enough and the house was tidy and updated. We packed the kids off to bed as quickly as we could and then collapsed ourselves. Starting off our trip with a late arrival was suboptimal but unavoidable given the flight schedules.

The main event for our first full day in Columbus was the Ohio state fair. I'm a big fan of state fairs since I think the rides are just as good as the Florida theme parks without the long lines and outrageous prices. Part of the reason we had chosen these cities was that it allowed us to bracket the trip with the Ohio state fair on the first day and the Indiana state fair on the last. Today's festivities wouldn't kick off until ten which meant we would have time to get breakfast at one of Columbus's multiple food halls. Food halls are a pretty important part of our travel planning in both the United States and Europe. I generally prefer them to restaurants because the five of us can mix multiple cuisines in one meal. They're also fun to walk around in and get a handle on the energy of a city. I find that the number of food halls and their liveliness in a city correlates pretty well with how interesting the city turns out to be overall. I had gathered a list of six food halls in Columbus and its suburbs, which was a surprisingly high number. The most promising of these was North Market which also had the earliest opening time at nine. The original North Market was one of Columbus's four public markets in the nineteenth century but burned to the ground in 1948. For the next fifty years the market limped along in a military surplus Quonset hut until the city decided to buy and renovate an adjacent farming equipment warehouse. The current version of North Market was born in 1995 and hosts an impressive thirty-five vendors. It is the only one of the four public markets to survive to this day.

We arrived quite early and some of the restaurants hadn't opened yet but we were immediately impressed by the colorful layout and the quality of the vendors. They had the typical offerings like ramen and pizza but a large number of uncommon cuisines such as Somali, Polish, and Moroccan. They also had Ian's favorite, a raw bar with several different kinds of oysters and other seafood dishes. Even with the five of us we would have had to make several visits to try out all the food we were interested in. If we had been interested in grocery shopping there were very appetizing selections of cheese, bread, and produce.

We were off to a good start and we continued our momentum with a visit to the Clintonville farmers market which takes place every Saturday from nine to twelve. Clintonville is a large neighborhood north of the center which is bisected by North High Street, a street we were going to encounter again and again during our stay. It was pretty clear from the houses that we were in a much more affluent neighborhood than our home base in the South Hilltop area. The farmers market was quite large and very busy with an energetic atmosphere. Most of the vendors were obviously genuine farmers who had trucked their own produce in from nearby towns, not resellers.

Inside the building that was surrounded by the farmer's market there was a communal art gallery called Studio 18. They were taking advantage of the heavy foot traffic by showing some of their artists working on new pieces inside the studio. I saw they also offered art classes for kids and a family paint night. We already had a full schedule for our entire stay in Columbus but I made a mental note of another fun activity that was available in the city.

The fairgrounds was in the middle of Columbus, just a few miles north of downtown, and the parking area was packed. We had to walk more than five minutes just to reach the entrance to the state fair. Once we got inside we were greeted with the familiar sights and smells of the highest sugar, highest fat foods that can be produced with twenty-first century technology.

Of course the main reason we were at the fair was so the kids could go on rides but that didn't mean we were going to ignore the things that were special to the heartland. For me that meant the livestock competitions, which aren't much of a thing in South Florida where we're from. All of us are avid carnivores, except for Spenser, and I like the kids to have some idea where the meat on their table actually comes from. The animals in these shows are often quite beautiful to look at as well, with coats that have been trimmed and groomed until they seem to be works of art as much as they are living beings.

It isn't so much the animals themselves that fascinate me but the husbandry culture that goes with it. I always see a lot of young people managing the livestock, sometimes even pre-teens, and I can only imagine how much hard work they've put in over the months leading up to these competitions. It's pretty typical for us coastal types to look down their noses at farmers and Midwesterners in general but without the productivity of the heartland I don't think the United States could have ever achieved the position in the world that it has today.

The animals may have been beautiful to look at but they still created a prodigious amount of excreta along with the commensurate odors. Given my profession I'm not particularly susceptible to these concerns but eventually my family had enough of the zoological aromas. We proceeded to the roller coaster area and bought the unlimited ride wristbands for the kids. Fortunately Cleo and Ian have grown to the point where I rarely get pressed into providing adult companionship on the rides. As far as I can remember I've always hated the sensation of dropping and it's hard for me to understand why other people seek it out. I'd rather get my blood drawn. Spenser seems to share my distaste for roller coasters so hopefully I'm approaching a future where I never have to get on one again. Cleo is fearless and has started going on the most terrifying rides that I never would have considered, and usually Ian is game to join her. I'll take a farmers market any day.

The kids got tired of the coasters a little quicker than I expected so we moved over to the buildings that were hosting the art and craft competitions. A lot of the work was submitted by local professional artists and was quite impressive, although the kids were generally unimpressed.

We took our lunch break in the Taste of Ohio food pavilion which had slightly less unhealthy choices than the dee fried everything kiosks near the entrance. Fortunately I'd had a chance to do a little in depth research on the fair while the kids were playing so I knew there were a lot of interesting and fun activities in an area called Natural Resources Park. It was way off on the periphery away from the other activities and we never would have found it by chance, but fortunately it wasn't far from the food pavilion. Here they had all kinds of rural activities that my kids rarely have the chance to try like fishing, archery, and shooting. They had stocked a sectioned off area of the pond with little freshwater fish that would have been better suited to an aquarium than a dinner plate, but my kids are still young enough that a few guaranteed bites more than made up for the lack of size.

Close to the fishing pond there were ranges set up to demonstrate archery and shooting. My kids have tried archery a couple of times in China but they've never held actual guns before, even pellet rifles like the type they had here. I've had very negative feelings about guns since I worked on the trauma service as a surgical resident in St. Louis in the nineties and I've never seen shooting as an important skill for a child to learn. In this case I really couldn't justify forbidding them to shoot pellet rifles on principle and they did enjoy it a lot, although somehow I beat their pants off at it. Outside the buildings a staff member was displaying the pelts of all kinds of wild animals and inviting people to guess what they were. A couple were obvious but we didn't recognize most of them.

I had originally thought we would have dinner at the fair and then go straight to our planned evening activity, but when the kids finished with the rides early I started to consider a more interesting alternative. I hasn't expected to find authentic cuisine from the unheralded Chinese province of Ningxia in Columbus but Xi Xia Western Chinese appeared from the reviews to be exactly that. Once I realized we might be able to squeeze in dinner at Xi Xia I couldn't abide the thought of fair food again and I started to hustle everyone towards the exit. Of course the kids then decided they had to have one or two final rides and I had to grit my teeth while watching the minutes tick by. Fortunately once we arrived the food came really fast and was just as good as I had hoped. The closest cuisine I've experienced personally was in Xi'An, one province east of Ningxia, and the noodle broth was as good as anything I had over there. The food came so quickly that we had time to explore the Kenny Centre strip mall where Xi Xia was located. Aside from several other very authentic looking Chinese restaurants, the entire northern section of the mall was devoted to Japanese restaurants and a Japanese market. We were quite taken aback to discover that it was easier to find bona fide Asian food in Columbus than in our much larger home town of Miami.

The reason our schedule was somewhat tight was that I had tickets for a monthly improv show called ROT at the Hashtag Comedy Club in the Short North strip of North High Street. Cleo and Ian are definitely old enough to appreciate a comedy show and Cleo has done some drama herself so I thought it would be a great experience for them. Mei Ling and I love live theater as well and we've been looking forward to this phase of our kids' development where we can start attending more stage productions. The show was a relatively small-scale affair with about forty seats but the house was packed. Our kids were the only ones there and the material was definitely not age appropriate, especially with respect to one performer who had a habit of inserting the F word into almost every single sentence she uttered. I cringed every time she opened her mouth but the kids, especially Cleo and Ian, were rapt for the whole performance and laughed uproariously. I reassured myself that by their age they would be hearing that word spewed regularly by their classmates and I should credit them for not using it themselves, at least within our earshot.

After the show we took a walk down North High Street to get the feel of Short North. It was a very colorful, energetic strip without any of the exclusivity and attitude that one might have encountered in a larger, more touristic city. It's hard not to love a neighborhood with a record store called Magnolia Thunderpussy, creative street lighting, and seventy-five year old diners. We treated the kids to ice cream at The Yard Milkshake Bar, which is a nationwide chain that got its start on the TV show Shark Tank. The theme of the restaurant is over-the-top milkshakes and bowls which pack two or three additional desserts into the base product. My jaw dropped when I saw the concoctions people were eating with calorie counts that were higher than what I allow myself for an entire day. I felt like I was watching America's obesity epidemic unfolding in front of my eyes. The simple ice creams I let the kids order took about a half hour to appear and every time a server passed us a strong skunky odor of marijuana wafted from their clothing. I passed the time watching the four people behind the counter and it was amazing how little they were accomplishing despite appearing quite busy to the casual observer. I wondered if their manager was aware of what was apparently going on in the break room, or if he was an active participant.

Our first day in Columbus had been extraordinarily successful and I felt quite relieved about my decision to spend twelve precious summer days traveling through some of the most ostensibly boring territory in the United States. Columbus was a perfect example of the hidden America, a collection of unheralded cities that contain all kinds of cultural treasures, beautiful architecture, and enjoyable experiences waiting to be discovered by any traveler with an open mind.