Notes.

I'm trying to evoke the style of the old Baedeker guides while including helpful new stuff, like GPS coordinates. Some people may not like staring at a phone, but in this case it's no different from staring at a book. Each walk contains text on how to get to the starting point, how to get to each Point of Interest, and descriptions of what you'll see. The route is broken into logical sections that include a GPS coordinate and a You Are Here button on the route map.

I've explored Atlanta, Birmingham, Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Dayton, St. Louis, and Lexington; I've also explored a bunch of smaller towns that are often just as interesting without being as overwhelming as a large city. As these tours show, all you need to do is look around.

This is the first written walk I worked on, back in September 2019. It took absolute hours to gather all the information–one day I walked around for three hours–but a lot of that was learning how to organize a written tour. I've given this tour twice and it takes two hours to see everything.

This is part one of the left side of the cemetery (from the main gate). This part of the cemtery looks and feels older, and the plots are more compact.

This is part two of the left side of the cemetery (from the main gate). This stroll crosses the previous one but has a completely different route.

This walk covers the area on the far side of the lake; this stroll is the most spread out, but still worth the walk.

I've been wobbling around downtown Louisville since I moved there in 2015, so this was much easier. I knew how to organize the information so the trick was figuring out how to curate everything. Do I add this street? Which side do we walk on? Can I explain this detail well enough to include it?

This is Louisville's most pedestrian friendly street (at least north of Broadway). There's a lot of ornamentation, a Carnegie library, and a President.

This walk covers Main Street east of Fourth Street, including underneath the Second Street bridge–and yes, there are things under the bridge.

This walk covers Main Street west of Fourth Street. We walk four blocks down one side and back on the other.

Lexington's tricky. It doesn't have a large amount of historic commercial architecture and they are often separated by modern buildings. This doesn't mean there isn't anything to see–there is; it's more about how to weave it all together. What happened is that I started to pay attention to those parts of a city that aren't highly ornamented facades, those bits of infrastructure that are still visually interesting.

When I first visited in 2016 I managed to completely miss the old parts and only saw the more contemporary sections. Then I explored a more after I moved to Lexington and found a bunch of interesting stuff. I couldn't split this into two walks, so I reworked the route three times to get it right. It was worth the extra work and I found new things each visit.

Winchester is my first small town walk. I did the scouting visit in May 2020 and was really happy to see how many interesting buildings were there–and in such a small area. This is where I really started paying attention to streetscapes.