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Discover Views, German Heritage In River Valley

Midwest Adventures By Mike Michaelson

The hammer throw is one of many unique games you'll be able to witness at Wisconsin's Highland Games.

Editor's Note: This is the second story in a two-part series by Mike Michaelson.

It is well named, the Overlook Restaurant at Leavenworth, Indiana. Sit at a window table and enjoy a 20-mile view of an oxbow bend in the Ohio River. It's a spot to watch river traffic as hard-working tugs muscle strings of barges downstream---and where sometimes the river appears empty of all but hawks riding the thermals as they hunt for supper. It is where the sun blazes on the horizon as its sets spectacularly on the wooded hills---known locally as "knobs"---across the river in Kentucky.

Although the view is the star attraction, folk also go for down-home specialties that include country fried chicken with biscuits, pork chops, country ham, fall-off-the-bone baby back ribs and home-style meatloaf. Finish with that quintessential down-home dessert, blackberry cobbler, hot from the oven and accompanied by a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For more down-home flavors, follow the Scenic Byway that roughly parallels the river and offers a pretty 71-mile drive from Edwardsville, just west of Louisville, to Dale, near the site of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home.

Main street diners offer persimmon pudding and blue-plate specials, a general store invites you to linger and browse and a barber shop sports a striped pole. Could one of these time-warp towns be Mayberry? Is that Floyd the barber (and incorrigible gossip) sitting outside in the wan late-afternoon sunshine? Are Andy and Barney nearby?

The road twists and curls through canopies of maples and oaks, slicing through Hoosier National Forest. It passes cornfields and livestock farms, dilapidated shacks and isolated trailer homes, a chapel tucked into the hillside, river's-edge cabins and boat sheds with pontoons for rent. Along the highway are rattletrap metal bridges and weathered barns with faded "Mail Pouch" signs.

As you travel the Ohio River Valley, ducking in and out of time zones, discover the region's German heritage. Nowhere is this more evident than in Jasper, where the names of businesses include the likes of Krueger, Siebert, Betz and Schmidt, and where a major attraction is the Schnitzelbank restaurant, which is as German as the dirndl and lederhosen worn by wait staff. There are draft beers from Germany and, for the reckless, massive glass "boots" to drink them from (based on an old military custom). Teutonic trappings include colorful beer steins, cuckoo clocks and daily concerts from a glockenspiel in a rooftop tower.

You'll want to sample the eponymous schnitzel or perhaps a two-inches-thick pork chop smoked in-house. There is beef rolladen, sauerbraten and wurst platters combining three kinds of sausages. Finish with the inevitable (but superb) apple strudel and perhaps the singing, led by a waitress, of the hokey Schnitzelbank song.

For German-style wines, stop at Winzerwald Winery at Bristow. The name translates to "vintners of the forest" and the winery occupies a pretty hill where an outdoor wine garden overlooks Interstate 64, with the Hoosier National Forest as a backdrop. The wine-tasting counter is fashioned from a variety of native woods.

Although opened only since June 2002, the winery already has earned more than 100 medals, including "best of show" awards. A visitor from France declared the award-winning Riesling to be "the best Riesling I have tasted outside of Alsace."

Owned by Dan and Donna Adams, the winery was named to honor the family's German heritage as well as the Swiss and German heritage of the southern Indiana Uplands and Perry County. In the early 19th century, hundreds of acres of grapes were grown in the hills along the river and the region became known as "Little Rhineland."

At first glance, Milltown, Indiana, looks like it would work as a location for a remake of Deliverance, the 1972 thriller about a canoe trip gone wrong. Quickly, though, you see that it is a friendly little community that is busy with family groups ready to hit the Blue River with canoe or kayak. It even has an estimable eatery, Blue River Cafe.

Meandering through scenic wooded hills---and sometimes doubling back on itself---the Blue River features fast water riffles as well as slower moving pools. Rugged limestone bluffs, dotted with caves, tower high above the water. Cave Country Canoes offers paddling trips that match ability and experience. Lengths include full- to two-day trips (with overnight camping).

Depending on river level and your pace, two-to-four-hour trips are ideal for beginners and those with small children. Cost of canoe rental is $21/half day, $25 full day and $43 two days. Rates are per person, with kayak rentals priced a bit higher at $26/$31/$50.

Fed by more springs than any other Indiana waterway, the Blue River is home to a wide variety of wildlife. Sightings include deer, river otters, great blue herons (there's a rookery along the river), turtles, ducks, mussels and crayfish, as well as hellbenders.

The latter are North America's largest salamander and the world's second largest. Blue River is their only known habitat in Indiana. The high oxygen levels of the river make it an ideal environment for hellbenders and other aquatic wildlife.

The river otter, once common throughout the United States, became rare by the early 1900s and were extinct in Indiana by 1921. Wild-caught otters from Louisiana were successfully reintroduced into Blue River in 1999.

The Overlook Restaurant in Leavenworth, Indiana gives visitors the perfect view of the Ohio River bend and a spectacular sunset over the Kentucky hills. The restaurant also offers down-home specialties made just like at home.

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