More to See and Do in Western Kentucky

Our 2nd week

We started with a driving tour of Kentucky Amish country, exploring a variety of market stores with Amish furniture, plants, tools, and bakery items.  Some of the pies and cakes were very hard to pass up, but we did. (Not to pat ourselves on the back too hard!) We found a nice local spot called, The Front Porch, for lunch and then made our way back to the RV for Happy Hour.

Tuesday morning, June 4^th, we finished planning our travel route from now to mid-July. When we leave here we’re heading to Louisville and Lexington to see some of the sites and taste some of Kentucky’s bourbon, wine, and beer. On Tuesday afternoon we did a little more sightseeing around Grand Rivers and then got an ice cream from DQ before heading back to the RV where Ray made a delicious Caprese Stuffed Chicken Breast dinner.

On Wednesday we went back to Paducah, and stopped at the Paducah Brew Werks for lunch. This pub serves almost all locally brewed beers and ales, and they were wonderful. They also serve food, and the chicken wings, which Ray kept mistakenly calling ribs, were delicious.  We may visit this brewery again before we leave the area. (No MAY about it, We’ll Be Back!)

Ray loved these "Ribs"

The National Quilt Museum is amazing and a ‘must see’ if you’re ever in the area.  Some of the quilts were just unbelievable!  

If you want to see more examples with their descriptions, follow the link below. It shows some of the items Ray and I thought were breath-taking!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gzVaRubMVVUXoKKB6

On Thursday we drove to Benton, Murray, and Aurora to see more of the countryside.  We stopped at Southern Salvations, a lovely shop run by a Mom and her son in Symsonia, KY. We had great conversations about how the shop started and the son's plans for building "Tiny Homes" an idea that appeals to more and more retirees! Their use of a "vintage" Chevy reflected the ambiance of the shop.

Murray State College is in Murray a beautiful town with all the shopping you could ask for.  Somehow college students inspire a terrific variety of retail, restaurants and services. We also visited the Hitching Post Country Store on this venture. A store that looks like a museum but is just an old store that has not been modernized much, selling everything from gun powder to fudge.

Heading back to the RV we drove along the “400-Mile Yard Sale” that starts in western Kentucky and goes all the way to eastern Kentucky. It’s a 4-day event and just in the small area we drove through there were many houses/businesses participating.  This 400-mile yard sale reminded us of the 70-mile yard sale on Prince Edward Island, just a bit bigger.  Our friend Jacqui Danek would love this yard sale except that she probably couldn’t do the whole 400 miles in the 4 days!

For lunch we dropped in to Belew’s, a carhop restaurant recommended as the best in the area! Lots of great “people watching” at a carhop!

Friday is “Food Truck Day” in Calvert City. This is a tradition that started here a few years ago and we read that it was very popular so we thought we’d try it. Unfortunately for us this Friday only had two food trucks and neither of them had anything we were interested in for lunch so we came back to the RV and made our own lunch.

 After lunch we drove to Patti’s 1800 Settlement. Last year they had a fire and unfortunately they are still in recovery mode. We did get to walk around an antique store but not much else was open for business.  We did discover a Grand Old Lady dressed in her finest!



We left Patti’s and toured more of the local countryside when we stumbled upon a local farmer stand, no more than a mile from the RV!  Great fresh tomatoes and green beans, patty pan squash, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, onions. Now that we know about this farm stand and it is only a mile from us we’ll definitely be back. Excellent tomatoes!!

Our 3rd Week

Over the weekend we took it easy. Lalia made bread, we watched golf, visited our local farm stand again, and in general relaxed.

The following Monday, June 11^th, we took a ride to Smithland, on the Ohio River, with the goal of visiting a few historical sites, which got some publicity but not enough attention in Smithland.  

A house built circa 1780 deserves more than just this sign!

Seemingly this building is in pretty good shape for being so old!

We were amazed by the sandbags next to the Ohio, at least 30 ft. above the River they were stacked another 8 feet high. They obviously have had some serious flooding in Smithland!  

White Sand bags beyond the Gazebo

We drove small back roads along the Ohio, to Cave in the Rock, Illinois, to a 6-car ferry similar in size to a ferry we took in Nova Scotia in 2014.  On this windy day, 30 MPH winds, it was amazing to watch the small car ferry negotiate the passage, “crabbing” all the way. The person in charge of this ferry is very talented for sure. It also reminded us of the ferry we took across the Yukon River on our way to Dawson dealing with the strong current and wind!

The weather improved that day to the point where the temperatures were in the 70’s with no humidity. Great weather and it’s supposed to be like this all week. In the small city of Marion, KY, we had a wonderful lunch at Tony's Main Street Italian Grille, one of those places you stumble upon and wish you had in your own hometown.

The Land Between the Lakes is formed by two lakes, the Kentucky and the Barkley, and the Visitor Center at the Kentucky Dam was very interesting. The volunteers working at the center were very knowledgeable and great to talk to. They gave us a short history of how the dam was built, why it was built, and how it has impacted the area and farmers. I’m sure the story is about the same for all the TVA dams and their impact on the Tennessee/Kentucky area has been a great thing.

We thought it was very interesting that the 16 TVA dams are all managed by a control center in Chattanooga, all by computer. Although employees work at each dam performing maintenance and general operations_, they are also there in case of an emergency call from operations coordinators in Chattanooga.  They can operate each dam from the local control rooms in the case of an emergency or computer outage.

The dam locks of the Kentucky Dam provide access to shipping throughout the Mid-west. It's an extraordinary construction that is being expanded to handle larger barges.

The weather has really turned cool and nice with temperatures in the high 70’s or low 80’s and very little humidity.  Thursday the high temperature was 74 so it was a good day to wash the RV. The rest of this day we watched some golf, visited our local farm stand for some veggies, and did some small things to the RV inside. Every once in a while we just need a ‘nothing day’. It gives Lalia a chance to think up future adventures. Ray takes care of what we are doing tomorrow, and the next tomorrow!

On Friday, June 14th, we drove 10 minutes to Green Turtle Bay to tour replicas of the Nina and the Pinta, sailing ships managed by an organization called the Columbus Foundation.  These two ships travel all over the country by navigating rivers, lakes, and oceans.  In the past year they have been to the east coast, Gulf of Mexico, Saint Lawrence River, and Mexico.

On this very informative visit, there were crew members available to discuss the history and origins of these ships. There is no replica of the Santa Maria because it would be too big to navigate some of the rivers the other two ships could navigate plus the story has it that Columbus didn’t like the Santa Maria because it was very slow and clumsy.

The ships are operated by 7 volunteers on the Nina and 9 on the Pinta.  They are looking for a cook to sail with them for the next four weeks or longer if you happen to know anyone interested.  After visiting these ships we made another attempt to eat at the Calvert City Truck Day Event but this time the park where it’s normally held was closed due to paving, so we missed it again.

Our final days near Paducah

We made one more trip to Paducah to visit the Riverwalk, Saturday Farmers’ Market, our favorite brew pub, a couple of wineries, and the Paducah River Discovery Museum.  It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the low 80’s and a bit windy.  

Paducah built a flood control wall along the river and on one side they have painted murals and installed placards to explain each mural and the history associated with it. Painting murals on the flood wall is a great idea and makes the entire area very attractive.

At the Farmers’ Market there were many vendors displaying arts and crafts and one vendor called Rejuvenated Rust that we thought would be a new craft for our friend Barbara Berman to try.

After walking the Riverwalk and Farmers’ Market we went back to the Paducah Brew Werks, our favorite brewery in this area, and we tried a couple more beers and had lunch. If you’re ever in the Paducah area this pub is a must, if you want a local beer.

After lunch we visited two wineries: the Purple Frog and the Fancy Farm wineries, wonderful facilities and staff, and the wines weren’t bad either. We enjoyed talking to the staff at both wineries and learned a lot about the history of each winery.

After the wineries we went back to the RV to watch some golf and relax. We head to Louisville and Lexington next week and will update the blog after we visit both these cities.