Banjos, Bib Overalls and Bourbon

It's been awhile since our last posting, we have been mainly in Kentucky taking in the sights.

Last weekend was the Memorial Day Long Weekend here in the US, so we decided to take it easy and stay put for the weekend. We stayed in western Kentucky in the Land Between the Lakes Region. It's an interesting area, between the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers which were dammed over 50 years ago to create Kentucky and Barclay Lakes. It's a fishing hub - they sure do like to fish down here - even in the rain!

The funniest thing that we did was go to a "Picking Party". We went to an old historic farm site and we stumbled upon a Bluegrass picking party. There was a central stage set up for different acts to play but people were playing their fiddles and banjos all over the place. Bib overalls is the clothing of choice in these parts!

See the video for some toe tapping bluegrass - if it will load - it's 16 sec long though (removed).


We then carried on to central Kentucky to Bardstown which happens to be the Bourbon capital of the world. We camped at My Old Kentucky Home State Park which just happened to be located right beside a beautiful championship golf course - cost? a whopping $22 for 18 holes. So there was no surprise when Ray spent the morning golfing and nearly had a heart attack walking it. The girls and I opted to tour My Old Kentucky Home instead.

This beautiful house was the inspiration behind the Kentucky state anthem. The fellow who wrote this song (Stephen Foster) also wrote classic songs like Yankee Doodle, and Camptown Races.

We also went to the Heaven Hills Bourbon Site where we learned about the history of Kentucky Bourbon making and sampled some. A bit strong for me!

We then went to Georgetown (close to Lexington) which is the home of a relatively new Toyota manufacturing facility. We went to the visitor centre where we hoped to be able to get a tour only to find out that the tours were all sold out for the day.

We are now out of Kentucky and in the hills of West Virginia. Our big excitement for the day was getting caught in a crazy rain downpour and seeing a greyhound dog race which didn't really impress the us - they sure run fast down here. We thought of entering Tyrone!

We are off to Virginia in the morning heading towards the Shenandoah National Park and Williamsburg.

Wow Taylor (and Kim) for their correct answer in our last Tennessee trivia question. The state of Tennessee seems to have some very bizarre laws - why you would shoot a whale from a vehicle? A couple of other interesting laws - it is illegal to lasso a fish and to drive while you are sleeping. Only in Tennessee!

Bye for now.