Wade’s ‘Best of Brown County’ Experience

The Brown County Chamber of Commerce recently announced the winners of this year’s “Best of Brown County” awards. The Best of Brown County was created to celebrate all that Brown County has to offer including food and drink destinations, live entertainment, and local historic sites. Over the next several weeks, Wade Linville (editor of The News Democrat, The Ripley Bee, and The Brown County Press) will be visiting each of the locations that earned a “Best of Brown County Award” and writing about his experience. This is part six of Wade’s Best of Brown County Experience featuring Brown County’s 2022 choice for Best Weekend Itinerary, cruising backroads.

From my teenage years in the early 1990s to now, I’ve cruised Brown County’s backroads at least once every other week on the average. Taking a drive on the backroads of Brown County is a relaxing way to enjoy a weekend day, no matter what the season. I’m sure many Brown Countians feel the same, and that’s why the Brown County Chamber of Commerce’s 2022 Best of Brown County Weekend Itinerary is cruising backroads.

As part of my Best of Brown County experience, I started my weekend of cruising the backroads of Brown County in the northern part of the county.

I started by hitting some backroads near Fayetteville and eventually dropped down to Lake Grant Road outside of Mt. Orab.

I then journeyed down Bethel New Hope Road outside of Georgetown to catch a view of the New Hope Covered Bridge. It was on Bethel New Hope Road where I came across a whitetail doe with her fawns enjoying an evening graze in a soybean field, a very common scene in rural Brown County.

My Best of Brown County experience of cruising backroads then took me to the southern part of Brown County where I traveled down Scoffield Road outside of Ripley. I’d been down Scoffield Road many times before, and cruising its hills and valleys never gets old. From Scoffield, I then took Eagle Creek Road, and from there to North Pole Road along Eagle Creek and coming to the Eagle Creek Wildlife Area. Like the Bethel New Hope Covered Bridge, the North Pole Covered Bridge still stands, but is no longer used for traffic. Every trip down the backroads along Eagle Creek in southern Brown County brings back memories of my past, fishing in Eagle Creek with my best friend and wife of 27 years.

You never know what you may see while cruising Brown County’s backroads – children swimming in a creek, farmers working in the field, cows and horses grazing underneath the evening sun, and the many forms of wildlife found in the rural areas far away from the city life.

On a weekend when you don’t have any plans, fill your car up with gas, go on a cruise of local backroads and get lost in the wild beauty of Brown County.