First Landing State Park - Virginia Beach, VA

We we’re going to come here in September, but when we were getting ready to leave, storm clouds rolled in.  Checked the weather - flash floods, high surf advisory, rip currents, rain, thunder, lightning.  So we decided to reschedule.  How mature is that!

It’s Deb’s birthday, and we are having an Indian summer.  As usual, we head out on a week-middle (Tuesday-Thursday).  Deb has asked for a birthday cake (not happening), a dinner date (probably will happen), a campfire (might happen), a hike (delightful), a stroll on the beach (romantic), and then a nice movie (I’ll tell her how it ends, tomorrow...zzzz)

We hung out at the beach with our beach chairs.  There were dozens of dolphins really close to shore, breaching, smashing their flukes on the surface of the water, swimming back and forth in front of us.  Drex is still miffed by wave action and indignantly struts back to shore after being buffeted around, until he decides to try it again.

Dinner was shredded Brussels sprouts and eggs...interesting...with rice and chicken.  After dinner, we watched the sun set (from the other side of the “don’t walk on the dunes” sign...shhhh).  And then we watched the first two episodes of M*A*S*H. (A birthday present).  I’ll tell her how it ended, this morning!

Wytheviile KOA - Wytheville, VA

We have decided that it’s time to quit our nice little trip and focus on the powerful hurricane that is barreling toward the East Coast.  We should be home 48 hours before the hurricane strikes.  It’s planned to hit North Carolina, but we would still get lots of rain.

Well the governor has decided that our home is in a mandatory evacuation area.  We have never approved of people staying put and putting first responders at an unnecessary risk.  Therefore, we are going to stay here til the storm passes.

Barren River Lake State Park - Glasgow, KY

Kentucky Dam

It’s a short day, but the clouds are threatening...they have been for days.  There has been no place to fly fish on the western part of the state so it’s time to improvise.  We start with a short walk across the TVA hydroelectric dam.  At the power plant, there is a visitor’s center, manned by a husband and wife team.  He worked for TVA for thirty years, in the personnel department (way before it became Human Resources!). We know way more about TVA then before.  By lunch time, we were in Fairfield, KY.  The birthplace of Jefferson Davis.  In his honor, the daughters of the Confederacy built  a 351ft obelisk (the tallest

Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY

concrete obelisk, and the fourth tallest of all obelisks). We know way more about Jefferson Davis than before.  By late in the afternoon, we decided to check out the Corvette Museum, where several cars were sucked into a sinkhole.  We learned way more about Corvettes than we knew before.  We finally made it to Barren River Lake State Park.

For our regional meal, we had a huge plate of Kentucky Cheese and Crackers, Dinner was a large plate of Pork Chops, with dessert a large bowl of fruit cobbler and ice cream.  Nothing was really unique, but the portions were huge!

Jefferson Davis Memorial

Kentucky Dam State Park - Calvert City, KY

Pennyrile Lake

We are at the western terminus of our fall sojourn.  In planning our trip, I was trying to follow the Culinary Trail - Better in the Bluegrass.  There are nine state parks that are participating, but for some reason, I only planned for eight of them.  A quick search, and I realized that I had missed Pennyrile State Park.  So as luck would have it, at noon, in the rain, there was the sign for Pennyrile State Park, only 10 miles away.  It was a gorgeous little park, overlooking a gorgeous little lake, we drank strawberry lemonade,  with Burgoo for an appetizer, and BBQ mutton, with baked beans, coleslaw, potato salad.  Peach Cobbler for dessert.

Peach Cobbler

Back on the road, into the rain, got to campground, waited for the rain to stop, went to dinner.  Of all the meals we have had, this was the least enlightened, we might have been more into it, if we weren’t still stuffed from lunch.  We did have a nice Kentucky Dam Iced Tea (not your mama’s ice tea...this one had bourbon in it).  Back at the campground, we got hooked up just before the rain.

Tomorrow, we head back east.

Pennyrile Lodge for lunch

Rough River State Park - Falls of Rough, KY

Tasted better than it looked

It’s a fairly short trip to Rough River, through some serious horse country.  We drove by huge estates and beautifully manicured stud farms.  I thought it might be nice to visit a bourbon distillery.  There was a sign for Woodford Reserve Distillery, of course, it was fifteen miles away, but we managed to drive down some beautiful tree lined lanes by miles of horse pastures.  It seemed more a place for a surrey ride than for an RV but you take what you got.  The distillery was lovely, we weighed the options of the distillery tour, but in the end opted for a nice lunch and a bottle of Kentucky’s finest. We won’t tell them that we’re going to make BBQ sauce with it.

Oops! Should have taken the photo before eating it!

There is no campground at Rough River, instead, we have a room in the lodge.  Maybe not quite the room that you might picture as a room at Rough River Lodge...think more Motel 6, but it works. Dinner is Bib Lettuce with a cucumber, cream cheese dressing and then Hot Browns and succotash, an open face ham sandwich with mornay sauce and a tomato slice, with some bacon.  Desert was bourbon bread pudding.  All in all, a nice meal.

Blue Lick Battleground State Park - Ewing, KY

Battle of Blue Licks Monument

Blue Lick State Park is a remotely located state park on a fairly small tract of land which celebrates the “resounding” defeat of the American Colonialists against the British (with the help of American Indians).  The campground is...interesting...power and water are both 50 ft from the site.  Fortunately, we were ready for them.

But we are here for our first Kentucky culinary treat, and it bested our expectations.  First, tomato pie.  We had just tried making this at home, but this one was made with Mayonnaise instead of yogurt.  Dinner was Goette (pronounced get - uh) with potato cakes.  Goetta is a sausage made from ground meat and pin oats.  Desert was transparent pie.  Which is made from everything bad.  The filling is sugar, eggs, butter and heavy cream.  I think it’s called transparent pie because right after they put it in front of us, it disappeared.

Maybe some fly fishing on the Lick River, but it looks pretty muddy and difficult to get to.

Daniel Boone fought in this battle

Pipestem State Park - Pipestem, WV

Drex keeping some workmen company.

This is the first day of our Fall Trip.  Our plan is to explore the culinary delights of Kentucky with a dash of fly fishing.   Kentucky is more than a day’s drive so we are stopping at an old haunt in West Virginia.  The last time we were here, we avoided the gourmet restaurant at the bottom of the gorge in favor of the completely packed Blue Mountain restaurant on the top of the ridge which was serving an all you can eat seafood buffet (so wrong on so many levels).  This time we opted for the gourmet restaurant only to find that it closed during the week.  We had dinner back at the Blue Mountain.  It was not crowded and we got a nice table with a lovely view of the sunset.  We ate West Virginia appropriate cuisine (trout and chicken), drank West Virginia craft beer and even brought a small sample back for Drex.

Tomorrow the Kentucky adventure begins in earnest.