R and J in the USA

We read somewhere that Kentucky, is not just a place – it is a feeling. Their state motto is “Unbridled Spirit”. After traveling through the commonwealth, we wholeheartedly concur. What that feeling, exactly is, is hard to say, but it is easy to say that we found ourselves quite smitten with Kentucky from the word go right up until the word goodbye. 

Whether it was the rolling hills and hollars glowing green in an afternoon spring sun sprinkled with the purple highlights of red bud trees in bloom or whether it was that special kind of Kentucky charm that pops out in simple words of wisdom like those that emanate out of Kentucky’s most famous Colonel or out of the number of salt of the earth folk we encountered along the way that embodied a special kind of calm and resilience and capability that was distinct and noticeable, there was just something about Kentucky.  

Whether it is the unmistakable sizzle of fried chicken or the chance to try bourbon flavored or infused anything, let alone the endless selections of stylishly presented bourbon crawling out of almost every corner of the state, there was just something about Kentucky. 

Whether it was the litany of people in every walk and field of life that were born and raised on Kentucky soil that went on to play on a national or global stage and make an impact, whether in art or sports or leadership – including the woman we had both lived a great deal of our lives knowing and respecting as our congresswoman from our home in Rochester, NY – Louise Slaughter, being from the small coal-mining town of Lynch where we are sitting right now and writing about our Kentucky visit before leaving the state, there is just something about Kentucky.

Whether it is the feel of a Louisville slugger bat filling in your grip with its sleek and perfectly weighted craftsmanship or the feeling of walking through this small factory with a big reach where craft and care meet to give Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Cal Ripken Jr., Hank Aaron and on and on the power in their hands to bring the crowds to their feet, there is just something about Kentucky. 

Whether it is the 1,900 miles of waterways that traverse the state or the mammoth cave that those waterways carved out underground to create the world’s largest underground cave system consisting of 426 miles of caves that just have a certain feeling to them that is hard to describe but is palpable in your bones, there is just something about Kentucky. 

Whether it is the feeling of awe of the sheer massive beauty of a horse in full stride coming around the corner of a racetrack or the stories of bravery and courage and skill and determination about the people and the horses behind it all that bring the world to its feet for “the greatest two minutes in sport” every year, there is just something about Kentucky. 

Whether it is the feeling you feel going underneath the ground into the coal mines beyond the sun’s reach or the stirring of the ghosts of miners of generations past that gave their lives, in every sense of the world, to fuel and feed the country through to victory in two world wars and then found themselves left behind without use for their generations of unique skill and bravery or much mention when technology and the times moved ahead with or without them or the feeling that is alive in the towns that remain where coal once reigned supreme, there is just something about Kentucky. 

Whether it is the chorus of “y’all”s with that Kentucky lilt that you hear buzzing about you everywhere you go or when you are sitting in a coffee shop writing about Kentucky as people come and go throughout their day, there is just something about Kentucky. 

As you wind yourself around the curves of Kentucky, as you enjoy the delights that Kentucky has to offer and take in the unassuming way you are greeted and welcomed at every turn, as you take in that certain something that is just in the air – there is something about Kentucky. And it is an easy something to find yourself loving in a certain Kentucky kind of way. Whatever that means, we don’t exactly know, but there is a good chance, if you really take the time to let Kentucky in, you will leave Kentucky feeling that it means something to you.

We do know that it came to mean something to us and we have loved our time in the Bourbon State. 

We started our time in Kentucky after a day of cramming to get our Alabama writing done and then driving four hours through Tennessee up north. We’ve tried, through this trip, to avoid backtracking wherever we could. There is no straight line or single circle through the US, but in order to be in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, we knew we’d have to make a bit of a loop and end up retreading Tennessee ground on our way back north. it was neat to drive through parts of Tennessee that we hadn’t driven through back at the cusp of January and February when we explored the state and we immediately noticed the difference between the open spaces in Alabama and the winding roads and rolling hills of Tennessee until we arrived at our first stop in Kentucky, the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. 

We arrived well after dark and pulled into an open campsite. The next morning, we checked in and moved over to a lakeside campsite where we were absolutely delighted to have a full day and another night and then another afternoon to just enjoy being in place. We worked on things that needed to be worked on. We went for a run in the land between the lakes and Julie got her swim in early in the cold Kentucky waters. The very first morning we woke up in Kentucky, on a walk to the bathroom, Julie’s Ode to Kentucky song popped into her head almost fully formed and right away. The air in Kentucky was already doing its work. The verses would take shape over the next week as we enjoyed more and more of what Kentucky had to offer, but Kentucky had us at hello.

Our next stop was Bowling Green where we would be running our 5K in the morning. We hadn’t stayed at a Harvest Host in a long while, mostly because we were often scrambling to get ahead of our itinerary and didn’t have as much attention towards planning. We decided to try and get back into the Harvest Host swing. They are usually great places to stay and we usually get to meet great people. This instance did exactly that. We stayed at a farm called Alive N’ Fuzzy, an Alpaca Farm in the middle of a bunch of housing developments in the outskirts of Bowling Green. We learned a lot from Eileen, our host, in our overnight stay, including the fact that when she first started farming there, there were no housing developments. Eileen was an absolutely wonderful host and a wonderful introduction to the people of Kentucky. You can read more about our delightful encounter with her in our People Along the Way section. 

The next morning, we headed over to Ephram White Park in Bowling Green for our 5K. It was a bubbling community event with lots of friendly folk and some real runners. You can read more about it in our 5K section.

We had planned to head over to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green after the race before heading to Mammoth Cave. The race had an unusually long awards ceremony and we found ourselves in need of a significant grocery stop. All of this added up to us barely having enough time to get to our scheduled cave tour of Mammoth Caves before we left town. This may have had a little something to do with the bbq ribs being sold right off the grill outside of the Krogers. We definitely had to order a slab. So, we had very little time for the Corvette Museum. Ryan ran in for a quick viewing while Julie was passed out in the van after a particularly exhausting race. 

Our next stop was Mammoth Caves National Park. We were focused on not being late for our 2:30 self-guided tour stop. Ryan was at the wheel and feeling the urge to  get there. This resulted in another first for the trip. Our first speeding ticket. Generally, we are law abiding citizens, but Ryan was going 54 in a 35. We were pulled over by the NPS patrol and paid the damage of 155 smackers. We then, very slowly and law-abidingly made our way the rest of the way to the visitors center.

We have been in a lot of caves and caverns on this trip. There is not a single one that isn’t worthy of some kind of awe. There is no question that there is something extra special about Mammoth Cave. We had certainly never been in a cave quite like this and it just felt amazing to be in it. 

After that, we walked the short hike down to the River Styx. We didn’t cross it, and we definitely didn’t step in it!

We headed over to our campsite and enjoyed another day of arriving at a campsite early enough to actually just enjoy being there. Julie set up the hammock and Ryan brought his computer out to the picnic table to do some writing. We were very happy. There was nothing outwardly special about the campground at Mammoth Caves, but we both just felt so relaxed and wonderful there. It was absolutely lovely. Whatever that “something” that is there in Kentucky, we were more than steeped in it by this point.

The next day, when we pulled out of Mammoth Caves, Julie hopped on her bike to get her Kentucky bike ride in to meet Ryan over at the shower building before we hopped in the van and headed north to Loretto, the home of Maker’s Mark bourbon where we were scheduled to participate in a 3:20 tour. 

We were now heading straight into bourbon country and we wanted to make sure to at least take one distillery tour and make sure to get a taste of the famed liquor, despite the fact that we are non-drinkers for the sheer reason that neither of us particularly likes the taste of alcohol. But that wasn’t going to stop us from having bourbon in Kentucky! You can read more about our bourbon adventures in another post.

While we were driving, we saw signs for Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. We quickly calculated the time it would take to squeeze in a 15 minute stop and calculated that we’d have just enough time to swing by and still make it in time for our bourbon tour.

It was well worth the stop. Having just come from the south, we hadn’t seen a lot of Lincoln for a while, though he is a strong presence in most every state outside of the south that you visit, whether in the form of busts or monuments or portraits or memorials or any other litany of dedications. We managed to make the stop quick and particularly enjoyed getting to see the spring that he pulled water from a few centuries past. The water is no longer drinkable, but it still is beautiful to see.

After our Maker’s Mark tour, we headed to the town of Bardstown, known as the bourbon capital of the world. We enjoyed a quick stop in the town, Ryan grabbed some ice cream and we headed north to park in Tyler Park, one of Louisville’s Olmstead Parks. Our hometown is also one that is blessed with some parks designed by the famed Kentucky born landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead. 

We decided to go for a walk into this area of Louisville and grab dinner. While we were enjoying our meal, we overheard the waitress announce to a table nearby that it was last call as the restaurant would be closing early due to the impending severe weather.

Uh oh. Here we go again! 

We looked up the weather and saw that Louisville was ALREADY right in the middle of a tornado watch. Once again, as during our time in Mississippi just a few weeks prior, we had no interest to be in a camper van if a tornado was a possibility. This time, we knew we’d be leaving Vanna outside to face the weather on her own unlike the synchronicities in Mississippi that had her inside the shop while the storms came through (and didn’t touch where we were at all). We headed to the nearest and most affordable Marriot, parked Vanna in the back in what we hoped would be the safest spot and, once again, packed up a few things to head into a hotel. We are fortunate that we were able to do that.

Only after the storms came through did we realize that, in going to the hotel, we actually ended up driving closer to where the worst of it swept through, but we still ended up at a safe distance. We saw the heavy rain and hail hit the windows of our room and heeded a warning to all Louisville residents to “TAKE COVER NOW” and headed down to the part of the lobby that is the storm shelter. As it panned out, no severe storm hit where we were. In the lobby, we were there with the two young folks working the desk that had checked us in and assured us that, being near the river, tornados never really come this way. We shared the lobby at 10PM with a 10 year old girl and her 79 year old grandmother that had pulled off the road on their way home to take cover in the lobby as well. They were sweet and the 10 year old girl was all amped up and couldn’t wait to chat with us about our trip and all the places that we had been. Ryan later mentioned that he had come over to sit with them before Julie had walked over because he had overheard the grandma saying the little girl was quite anxious about the storm. 

“She didn’t seem anxious to me.” Ryan reflected.

”Well,” Julie responded, “she was amped for sure. But it is clear that your presence was helping her calm down and redirect that anxiousness in a positive direction.”

It was a sweet moment, sharing the lobby with the two of them. 

By 10:30, the warning for our area had cleared and we went back up to our room and went to bed, grateful for, once again, being spared from the path of the storm and holding those that were not so lucky in our thoughts. 

As we write this, we are reading more severe weather warnings for the area that we just left a day ago. We wil keep an eye out though, as we continue on, hopefully, not finding ourselves stuck in any of the flooding that may be heading this way. 

The next day, we started our Louisville adventures and we were quite excited for them.

We started the day with a tour at Churchill Downs and taking in the museum. Julie, immediately started watching the Disney movie, Secretariat, after learning about the incredible story in the museum. 

Julie already had on her mind that Kentucky is famously a home for fried chicken, and of a particular brand that she was positive she wouldn’t be able to eat. Being in a sizable Kentucky city, Julie figured there would be some gluten free fried chicken somewhere in the area to be found. And that, she did. We made our plans to hit it on the way out of town and headed to our next stop that we were both looking forward to quite a bit – the Louisville Slugger Bat Factory. 

It was glorious. You can read more about our Louisville Slugger Bat Factory experience in our People Along the Way section.

Our Louisville day was packed and we still planned to stop at Chik’n Mi, a Korean infused fried chicken place that had a bountiful gluten free menu, including their fried chicken. Julie managed to squeeze in a short 40 minutes at the Frazier Kentucky History Museum before we headed east for dinner.

The food was out of this world. Julie drueled equally over her fried calamari as her fried chicken. 

We left Louisville and headed east towards Frankfurt to stay the night and be able to wake up and start our capital visits early. We toured the state capitol and found out that we were there just in the knick of time as the whole capitol would be shutting down in June for renovations. It being a building that was over 100 years old, it still had some of the original plumbing and electric and, according to the capitol policeman we spoke with, it was well overdue for some tune ups. Like so many capitol buildings, it was a stunning display of architecture. That said, there were many places where there was paint peeling and, if you looked closely, you could see that the upcoming renovations were well warranted.

We headed over to the cemetery across the river from the capitol where we visited the grave of Daniel Boone. Later in the day, Julie would learn an interesting story about the grave at the Kentucky History Museum. Before leaving the cemetery, we saw signs for a memorial to the unborn. We made our way to it and paid our respects at the touching tribute to lives lost to miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth. 

Next, we headed into town to take a peek at the Old State Capitol and, with the time we had left before we needed to head to Lexington, Julie only had 40 minutes at the history museum, just like in Louisville. Between the two, she figured she might be able to get a decent sense of Kentucky history. Luckily, there was a museum tour offered at 11AM and Julie was the only one there, so she got a customized 30 minute tour of the most important highlights of Kentucky History. In those 30 minutes, Julie learned more about Kentucky history than she had forgotten about the history of her own home state. The tour guide did an awesome job and when Julie got in the van, she couldn’t wait to tell Ryan the interesting story of how Daniel Boone ended up in Kentucky and about the friendly but spirited rivalry between Missouri and Kentucky over who really had the actual body of Daniel Boone in their graveyards. She recounted to Ryan the fact that, despite what we had both previously thought, Kentucky had not come into 1861 as a confederate state, even though they were a slave state, but rather, they had made it clear from the start that they intended to be neutral and that any soldier, Union or Confederate, would get shot if they came after anyone in Kentucky. The most striking moment was seeing the display of two Kentucky born leaders’ portraits posted next to each other – Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. We had never realized that they were both of Kentucky birth. These tidbits are just a teeny portion of all that Julie was able to absorb. Julie left after 30 minutes extremely pleased with how much history the tour guide had helped her learn in such a short time.

Our next stop was Lexington. We knew we wouldn’t have much time there to explore the town at all. Julie had scheduled a massage to help aid the recovery process that her tired body was showing signs of needing and that just about used up all the time we had to explore Lexington before we needed to move on. We wanted to land at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park in time for dinner. We stopped in Berea along the way, drove through the campus of Berea College and learned a little bit about what makes it unique as a college that charges no tuition to its students and hasn’t since 1892. We drove through Berea’s Old Town, well known for its historic arts district. 

Not long from our destination at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park we saw signs that immediately caused us to make a slight detour for one more stop before the day was over. The birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken! We made a beeline straight there and absolutely loved learning about this quintessential Kentucky figure. Julie would have loved to get some fried chicken if she could, but Ryan took one for the team and partook of all that finger lickin’ goodness for the both of us. We were both struck by all the great Colonel Sanders quotes throughout the museum and developed a much deeper appreciation for the life, the story, the accomplishment and the man behind the white suit and the world famous chicken.

We finished the early evening with a drive into Cumberland Falls State Resort Park in time to settle in and be able to make dinner at a reasonable hour. It was another beautiful spot to spend the night in Kentucky. In the morning, we hopped out of the van to walk around the campground and explore the woods a bit. We noticed a sign that said it was a 1.25 mile hike to the falls. Early in the trip, we had aspired to do a real hike in any state that had real hikes to offer. This was one of our goals that, though we did our best to keep up with, as things got busier and busier, especially keeping up with the blog and changing itineraries, we found ourselves making less and less time for. We managed to get a decent amount of hikes in through the trip, but it had definitely been a while since we’d taken one, for one reason or another. We eagerly hopped on the trail and headed into the woods for the short hike to the falls. Cumberland Falls was rushing and falling as it does with full force when we arrived. It has the unique quality of being one of only two waterfalls in the world to have a predictable schedule of moonbows. When the weather and moon phase is just right, the light of the moon shines off the mist of the falls and creates a glowing and sometimes colored arc over the falls. Alas, we would not see it, but the falls was still neat for a visit.

We hiked back to the van and filled our morning with getting to work on our end of state activities. Julie finished her song and was pretty excited about her Kentucky tune.

The morning went by quickly, and before long, we were bumping up against the clock to get to Lynch, Kentucky for what we had thought would be our last stop in the state. We were scheduled for the 4PM Coal Mine tour of Portal 31. When Devin arrived for our tour, it was clear, right off the bat, that he had a lot to say and we wanted to hear every single word of it. He took us into the mines and before we emerged 40 minutes later, we had a new appreciation for coal miners, mining country, Lynch, Kentucky and life itself. At 26 years old, Devin had already lived a lot of life and had a passion for life and his home town that inspired us both. You can read more about our encounter with Devin in our People Along the Way section.

We had hoped to finish all of our blog writing by the end of the day, but we were far from it this time around. We figured we’d finish in the morning, but, as it stands, it is already four oclcok in the next morning and it looks as though we’like need to spend one more night in Kentucky to get it all done. As of this writing, we are driving through gorgeous country with blue skies, on our way to Pikeville to spend the night, hoping that we can get it all done before the morning.

We are already one day late to start West Virginia, but that tells you a little something about Kentucky. We had five encounters with people that we just couldn’t avoid writing about. And there are others we could have written about if we needed more fodder. That can give you a little insight into our time in the Bourbon State, the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

There is just something about Kentucky and boy are we glad that we got the chance to drink it in.