The sun shines bright in My Old Kentucky Home

Hi y'all, Campers!

Kentucky! The Old South. A sure sign we're headed for home.

But we started the day in Indiana. We believe Indiana is the conjunction of two Native American words "Indi" meaning "rain" and "ana" meaning "more rain". From yesterday afternoon until we hit the Kentucky border today that's all we saw. It poured in Bloomington, flooded in McCormick's Creek, and was a torrent across Southern Indiana today. By the time we reached Kentucky it was clearing and it hasn't rained a drop here at Lake Cumberland State Resort Park (sounds fancy...eh?  It's still a campground... and an older, tired one at that.)

So, what'd we see and do today? Well, given the cold rain this morning we stayed hunkered down in the Airstream and had some extra coffee. Even the dogs wanted to stay in. We hit the road and thought about stopping at mid day when we would be near :Louisville but as that time approached we said "Nah" so we ate leftovers in the trailer while parked to do a bit of shopping. It was that kind of day.

We crossed the Ohio River at Louisville, KY around 1:00. We saw something we have not see this whole trip (except when caused by bison in Yellowstone) and that was a traffic jam. I-65 in Louisville was a construction-induced mess of traffic. We didn't like it.

The trip south and east from Louisville was pure Kentucky. There was the "Bourbon Trail" which included huge signs on the interstate for the likes of Jim Beam and Makers Mark distilleries which were probably placed with funds from the Kentucky Department of  Travel and Tourism and the State Historical Society. Then came a celebration of Stephen Foster and "My old Kentucky Home". That two timer... we thought we left him for good on the banks of the Suwannee River on the second day of the trip. After that came the hoopla about Abe Lincoln's birthplace and boyhood home. I bet the gift shop sells Abe Lincoln autograph model axes for rail splitting and sticks with burnt ends to use for writing one's A, B, C's  on birch bark. Then came the natural wonders including Lake Cumberland where we are now encamped.

Lake Cumberland is the third largest lake in the state. It is man made thanks to the US Army Corps of Engineers construction of a dam on the Cumberland River in 1950. It has seen a considerable number of issues with leakage around the dam over the years. This year marks its return to full capacity after being lowered in 2012 as repairs were made to address limestone erosion near the dam. (Remember the sink hole in Bowling Green, KY that sucked several cars from the floor of the Corvette museum a year or two ago? Sinkholes result from limestone erosion. Wouldn't be a good thing to happen under the dam that holds back the third largest lake in any state. Yipes!)

This park includes the campground, stables, boat launches, a marina, a hotel and... oh yes... a restaurant. We had to try that since we are both tired of Cafe' Airstream. It turns out Kentucky has a state food! No... not the Colonel's chicken... that's a commercial branding exercise drawing on Kentucky heritage. The state food of Kentucky is.... the "hot brown"! I know. I hadn't ever heard of it either. And I've been to Kentucky before. So, you may ask: What is a "hot brown"? Well, it'similar to foods you've had before. It is toast points with sliced turkey and sliced ham on it (sounds like an open faced ham and turkey sandwich... right?) but then comes the magic... its covered with cheddar cheese sauce and baked until bubbling hot. Here they garnish it with bacon and tomato. That makes it like a red neck "huevos ranchero", or a Welch rarebit with ham and turkey, or for you Army vets its like SOS/HT (that's chipped beef on toast with Ham and Turkey). Anyway, I had to have it. Here are the three statege of a hot brown with Lake Cumberland in the background take from our table at the Lure Lodge dining room:

So, people who eat this bubbling concoction are known to grab a slice of pizza straight from the microwave to cool the roof of their mouths and minimize additional blistering. I also believed that to this point in the trip I had lost a few pounds (we don't have a scale to confirm that). I now believe that is not the case. After finishing the entire "brown", I asked the waitress why its called a hot brown. I could only understand the "hot" part. She told me to come back tomorrow if I didn't understand the term by morning. I'm not sure what she meant by that.

Anyway, you can see the lake in the background of those hot brown pics above. The lodge and our campsite sit about 100-200' above the lake level, The park sits on a high peninsula. That makes the lake views dramatic and broad. Here are two pics of the lake taken from around the lodge:

Nice. I'm glad to finally have something to photograph after days crossing the "great flats" of the US. If you feel you missed something by my lack of pics of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana try this: Pull the crisper drawer from your fridge; dump its contents on your kitchen table (include the fresh items, the older shriveled stuff, any liquid and onion skins). Get your eyes down low, close to the table height and look across what you've built. That's what we looked at for the past 4 days and 15 or 16 hours of driving. Now don't you feel ready to take a deeper look at Lake Cumberland? We did.

So, tomorrow it's on to Tennessee!

Later...

SC