From Cave to Cabin

April 16-17

Monday I had tickets to the wimps’ tour. It is billed as fully accessible. No stairs anywhere. You even enter by elevator, a trip of 200 feet or more below ground.

This tour was led by Ranger Elaine, who led the Frozen Niagara tour on Sunday. 

Instead of taking a bus, you drive in your own car to the entrance for the tour. This trip had four cars with a total of nine people led by the rangers in a park van. There were no canes, walkers, or wheel-chairs, so maybe that constitutes a spry group for this event.

Mammoth Cave is a labyrinth of passages whose cumulative length is unknown. More than 400 miles of passages have been explored so far. Only a tiny fraction of that is open to tours for greenhorns.

After all, we’ve paid attention to the movies. You never can tell what kind of cannibal society has developed down there over the millennia. Can’t have taxpayers wandering into that.

There had been four or five known cave systems in the area, and tourism began there as far back as 200 years ago.

Cave explorers trekked through the guano for years. Those that weren’t eaten by cannibals eventually discovered that the different caves were all connected and part of one greater cave structure. 

And they’re still trekking, crawling through tight spaces, following an errant breeze because it may mean that a passage leads somewhere.

There is one tour available to the public that lets you play spelunker. Everybody puts on protective clothing, knee pads, and miners’ hats with lights in front. But hey, I’m way too claustrophobic for that.

The accessible tour starts in a passage that was a tourist destination in the 19th century.

It follows a tunnel with an oval cross-section cut by an underground river before the water table dropped. The Green River, where the cave waters drain, is eroding a deeper bed, and as it sinks, so do the cave waters. The current underground streams are about five levels down in the cave.

One of the first sights we came to was a historic bit of graffiti:

SUSIE ARMSTRONG

AUG. 27, 69

… As in 1869.

It was written with the smoke of a tallow candle, in large pixels—dots of about an inch, one at a time.

According to Ranger Elaine, Ms. Armstrong would have had to walk for about eight hours to get to this spot from the natural entrance, which was the only way in at the time.

We came next to an old cafeteria counter and picnic tables. It gave me flashbacks to the Seattle Underground tour.

But in this case, we were in a rock chamber whose ceiling is pocked with bumps of gypsum. An observer once said the place looked as if a bunch of children had thrown snowballs at the roof.

People actually used to cook there, and over the years smoke turned the gypsum black. 

Volunteers cleaned the roof and walls with a bleach solution. Maybe not the best restorative method, but it did recover some of the lost whiteness. The snowballs now have a grey patina, like maybe the kids who threw them had sooty hands. 

The cleaning also uncovered considerably more graffiti, including a plug for Hoofland’s Tonic, which has been found elsewhere in the cave.

One in pencil reads: To Nick the Guide.

Nick is identified as Nicholas Bransford, one of several slaves who led guided tours in the 1830s and ’40s.

The most famous of the enslaved guides is Stephen Bishop, who not only led tours, but also explored the place extensively on his own. He discovered several features that are parts of current tours, including the gypsum-covered chambers and passages where the accessible tour went.

He was also first to draw a map of Mammoth Cave. When it was included in a book years later, he was actually given credit for it by name. It made him an international celebrity. They say people came to the cave from as far away as Europe and requested Bishop as their guide.

But recognition didn’t set him free, at least right away. He wasn’t freed until he was 56. He died a year later.

Water for the cafeteria came from the Upside Down Well, so called because the drillers began in a deep underground passage and drilled upward to reach an aquifer. The well made it into Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Another section of the tunnel ceiling is covered with gypsum flowers. Like most of this stuff, I had never heard of them before. All I know now is that they are the result of slow water activity, and under the right conditions, the gypsum is deposited in swirls that do indeed look like exotic flowers.

Souvenir hunters used to cut them off the roof, so there are smooth places where flowers used to be. According to Ranger Elaine, people would carry them away in baskets.

The weight of the baskets grew heavier as the people walked back to the entrance. Eight hours is a long walk, even without a bag full of rocks.

So discarded gypsum flowers, products of millennia of water droplets, are found abandoned on the route back to the entrance.

There is also debris left by picnickers among the rocks. They stuffed empty bottles and broken crockery in niches. The stuff has been there so long that it’s not litter anymore, but historical artifacts, which are left in place.

Neither of my tours came near the historical entrance, which is a short walk from the visitor center. It’s in a deep ravine, and at least on Monday, after days of rain, a thin waterfall veiled part of the great opening. As you go down, you can see there is a tunnel going into the mountain.

It’s one of those spooky places where you expect to see a lady dressed in white and get to ask her questions about the future. 

It’s the picture of the day. You don’t see the Sybil because she ducked out for a smoke.

Paleo-Indians used the cave for almost 3,000 years. They left or lost artifacts like straw slippers, burnt-out torches made of cane stalks, and empty vessels. 

According to the notes in the museum at the visitor center, the oldest have been dated to about 5,000 years ago. The most recent Indian artifacts are 2,200 years old.

Did they stop going in? Nobody knows. Maybe they just got more careful about leaving litter behind.

Tuesday was moving day. My route to Winchester, Ky., passed near the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park. 

The visitor center is at farm site called Sinking Spring, near Hodgenville, Ky. It focuses on Lincoln’s time as child in Kentucky, before the family moved to Indiana.

I picked up an odd bit of useful trivia there. During his Kentucky years, Lincoln and his sister briefly attended an ABC school, also known as a “blab school,” because paper and writing implements were scarce and so children recited their lessons aloud.

It suggests a new dimension to Walt Whitman’s phrase “blab of the pave.” 

The big feature is a neo-classical monument. It sits on a rise, and you have to climb 56 steps, one for each year of Lincoln’s life, to reach it. Inside is a one-room log cabin.

At one time it was thought to be the actual cabin where Lincoln was born. An entrepreneur for a while made it into a touring exhibit. He would take it apart and rebuild it in various cities.

It was finally brought here to be housed in the monument. 

Teddy Roosevelt headlined the laying of the cornerstone on Lincoln’s 100th birthday in 1909. Taft dedicated the finished monument two years later.

More years later researchers turned up evidence that it couldn’t be the original cabin at all. So now it is considered a symbol of Lincoln’s humble beginnings.

The birthplace farm was known as Sinking Spring because the property has a small spring that runs through rocks and falls into a vertical cave. It looks like a miniature version of the Mammoth Cave’s historical entrance.

Who knows? Somebody in a miner’s hat may eventually find that it, too, is connected to Mammoth Cave.

Thomas Lincoln’s title to the Sinking Spring farm was challenged and he lost. He moved the family a several miles away to a place called Knob Creek where he leased 30 acres. The site is part of the birthplace national park.

His landlord’s title was challenged a few years later, and the tenants, including the Lincoln family, faced eviction. That’s when Papa Lincoln gave up and moved everybody to Indiana.

Next to the Sinking Spring part of the park is a log store and several small log cabins called the Nancy Lincoln Inn. It opened in 1928 and is privately owned. It was closed when I was there, but whether for the season or permanently, I don’t know.

The Knob Creek site has the Lincoln Tavern, which opened in 1933 and also was closed when I was there. It is a large log structure. Unlike the Nancy Lincoln Inn, the property wasn’t chained off, so I got a close-up look.

One continuous wall is two logs long. The pairs of logs are joined in the middle by making a cut in the end of each one so two half-circle cross-sections come together.

Another small cabin sits nearby. It is said to be the cabin of a neighboring family named Gollaher and was moved to the site at some point. There is a story that the Gollaher’s son, Austin, pulled Abraham Lincoln out of danger after he fell into a river. Lincoln couldn’t swim.

Dinner was at the Engine House Pizza Pub. One of the house specialty pies is called Luca Brasi Sleeps With the Fishes. It’s a combination of pepperoni, capicola, sweet sausage, giardiniera, and Kalamata olives. 

It was terrific. A little over the top, maybe frightening, just like Luca Brasi, but terrific.

The beer selection was limited. I managed to get West 6th amber on tap and Against the Grain Brown Note in a can. Both were good, and very different from each other. The amber was close to an English bitter; the brown ale had an almost burnt grain flavor.

Then I went back to the hotel to sleep with dreams of fishes.

Good night, all.

Harry

April 19

Hi, Grasshopper, 

I've clearly been in Provence too long (or maybe not long enough).

When I saw the word "cave" in your subject line I got all excited thinking you found a wine producer to visit!

But happy, nonetheless, to learn you are having fun. 

One more week here, dinner in Aix-en-Provence on Thursday, after which, I will be staying at a hotel near Marseille-Provence Airport, a la mode de Harry Hutchinson. 

I'll have a layover on Friday in Amsterdam long enough for lunch, a beer, and a joint or two with Sir Michael. 

Let's try to talk when I get back to Bangkok. 

Ciao and happy travels. 

Larry

April 19

Sounds like you're having a good time too, Sensei.

Can I use part of this on the blog when I post this trip?

If you want, I'll cut the part about the joints with Sir Michael if you don't want that published.

Yes, let's talk in a couple of weeks.

Grasshopper

April 19

I'd be delighted if you'd publish it, Grasshopper. And no need to censor. 

Not to take anything away from the entertainment value of your blog, but I doubt my Thai employers are regular readers of Harry Travels.

P.S.  You can use this email, too. 

Invoice for both is pending. 

Larry

Adventures Underground

April 14-15

I’d been keeping watch on the weather forecast which had been warning about high winds and heavy downfalls—rain south, blizzards north—for the Midwest.

I didn’t make plans beyond Richmond and Fort Boonesborough and kept my options open. One plan was maybe to go to Chattanooga for a couple of days. Mammoth Cave was another option. So was heading east to the Carolinas to escape the heavy weather.

As of Friday, hey, ho, the wind and the rain were on their way directly toward the Carolinas. That put a literal damper on one option.

The rain was on its way to Kentucky, though not in a form as dire as originally predicted. Chattanooga had a similar short-term future.

An indoor activity seemed to be in order, so Mammoth Cave became Plan A.

One of the things I did on Friday was to set up the Mammoth Cave leg of the trip.

Saturday morning I took the route out of town that passes the Richmond (Ky.) battlefield. 

In August 1862, a Rebel army invaded Kentucky from Tennessee. Not knowing at first whether it was a raid or a full-scale invasion, the U.S. Army sent a force of about 6,500 men to the area around Richmond.

According to information posted on the site of the battle, most of the Union troops were untrained. Many had enlisted only a couple of weeks earlier and then found themselves in boxcars going to Kentucky.

Fighting lasted two days. The Union army lost more than 5,300 men, most of whom were captured.

There are several buildings from the time still standing, including the house that is now the visitor center. Farther down the road is a brick church, Mount Zion Christian, which was used as a field hospital. Beyond that is a large brick house with several outbuildings.

I didn’t get the name of either house. The wind was really kicking up and rain was imminent, so I didn’t stay long.

The route to Cave City, which was the day’s destination, took me through a town called Berea, named for a Greek city mentioned favorably in the Acts of the Apostles. 

It’s home to Berea College, which was established in 1855 in a one-room schoolhouse and was the first coeducational and interracial school in the South. Probably one of the few in the world at that time.

The college’s website has an account of its early history. Its founder, the Rev. John Gregg Fee, set out to create an institution that, as he put it, “would be to Kentucky what Oberlin is to Ohio, anti-slavery, anti-caste, anti-rum, anti-sin.” 

The original Cassius Clay (not Muhammad Ali, but the Abolitionist) was involved. They were run out Kentucky by slavers and didn’t come back till after the Civil War.

The school is tuition-free. According to the website, part of Berea College’s mission is “To provide an educational opportunity for students of all races, primarily from Appalachia, who have great promise and limited economic resources.”

After I checked in at Days Inn in Cave City, I took an exploratory run to the Mammoth Cave park visitor center. It’s easy to find. You follow one road, which changes its name from time to time, until you come to Mammoth Cave Entrance Road.

That intersection is a short way past Little Hope Cemetery. 

It’s not a comment, but rather the name of the church that once stood there, before the federal government bought the land. The congregation meets these days in a different building outside the park.

I had surprisingly good Mexican food for dinner at a place called El Mazatlan, about a half mile from the hotel. Th menu offered a flight of enchiladas—one bean, one ground beef, one chicken, and one cheese—and a side of rice. They were excellent with the sauce, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. 

The beer selection was typical. Throwing in that slice of lime makes lagers like Modelo and Dos Equis taste better.

For dessert, I picked up Country Boy Cliff Jumper IPA. That’s the same brewer that makes Cougar Bait.

Another culinary surprise came the next day at lunch.

I had a ticket for the 3:15 tour called Frozen Niagara, named for the flowing rock formations, at Mammoth Cave and so left the hotel a little after 12. 

The exhibits in the visitor tell you more than you want to know about sinkholes, rainwater, karst formations, limestone, eyeless fish, and other fascinating details of the geology, flora, and fauna of the area. 

It also has a restaurant where I tried an appetizer of fried green tomatoes. 

I expected two or three slices of something like tomatillo sauteed in oil. No, they were huge slabs of vegetable Dixie fried. Duh.

They were not segmented, as I’d expect a tomato to be, and they were almost hard.  Had to slice them with a knife. They were good, but pretty heavy.

I had that with a bowl of cheese and potato soup, which I had expected to come in a cup.

Needless to say, I was ready for the ramps and stairs inside the cave.

The tour was fascinating. The bus driver told the rangers that there were 29 ticket-holders. I guess they’re careful about the head count to make sure nobody gets left behind in a crevice.

The bus dropped us off at a man-made entrance to the cave. It looks like a cinderblock shed built into the hillside.

That opens to a route of narrow passages with low ceilings that look like rough plaster, but they are indeed natural limestone formations.

The cave leaks all over the place. That’s what shapes the limestone.

With all the rain over the past couple of days, there were puddles on the floor, drips from the roof, and generally lots of real cave fun. 

There were creatures all over the walls that look like spiders, but as we learned later, are crickets. Their antennas are very long and help them find their way in the dark. They leave the cave periodically and somehow bring stuff back that feeds many of the other small creatures that don’t get to forage outside.

The tour gets its name from the cascades of limestone in this part of the cave. According to our tour leader, Ranger Elaine, when rain falls, it picks up CO2 and becomes acidic. It flows directly underground through sinkholes, and dissolves the limestone.

As the water loses its CO2 content, it deposits the limestone solution, which hardens into flowing forms of stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and various illusions.

Domes and pits are covered with natural decoration. Some formations look like lace.

One resembles a turkey, so the chamber where that was found is called the Thanksgiving Hall.

I tried to photograph some of them, but the light is so dim that it takes a long exposure to resolve an image. Too long for me to do it holding the camera in my hand. Here’s a fuzzy shot of an overhead formation.

One particularly ornate section, called the Lace Hall or the Tapestry Hall or something like that, is 49 stairs down, which means it is also 49 steps back.

Yeah, I can do that. I used to stay in a fifth-floor walk-up in New York before I retired. This would be like reaching the street and having to go back up to get something I forgot.

I did all right. Ninety eight steps round trip and I made the first 86 with no strain. I was proud of myself. 

The last dozen made me humble, though. At the top, I stopped to catch some breath, smacked myself on the chest, and didn’t pass out.

The tour included a blackout—brief and intentional, mind—to demonstrate what total darkness is. 

The bus came back to a place by the park hotel where we had to walk on a mat saturated with some kind of cleaner. The caves are infested with a fungus that causes white nose syndrome, a disease fatal to bats.

Walking on the mats disinfects our shoes so we won’t carry the fungus to bats somewhere else.

I went to a local steakhouse, the Sahara, for dinner, mainly because I wanted a side of green vegetables and wanted something that goes well with red wine instead of beer.

The steak, a sirloin, was cut very thin, but they still managed to send it to me rare. The green beans were done the way I like them, cooked to death.

I bought a bottle of wine at the local liquor store. The selection wasn’t very broad, mostly California wines. I chose a pinot noir from Cupcake Winery.

It turned out to be rather sharp and acidic. I’ll finish the bottle, because I always do, but doubt that I’ll buy anything else with that label.

So that was it for the day. 

Be well, all. Don’t underestimate those steps, and keep the lights on when you’re underground.

Harry

April 17

Harry, sounds like you're having fun.

I wanted to tell you I've been watching “Peaky Blinders” because of your recommendation, but wish it had subtitles because those are some thick-ass accents.

Karl

Boone Companions

April 12-13

The ride to Boonesborough would finish a trip that I made a few years ago. I had found that Interstate Highways 78 and 81 roughly follow the route that the Boone family took when they moved from Reading, Pa., to somewhere in North Carolina.

The western end of U.S. 58 in Virginia follows a section of the Wilderness Road, which began in North Carolina, crossed southern Virginia and then passed briefly into Tennessee to reach the Cumberland Gap.

The gap was as far I got into Daniel Boone country on that first trip. I wound up heading into Davy Crockett territory and discovered the weird magic of Pigeon Forge and the Smoky Mountains. But that’s another story.

Daniel Boone crossed the gap many times to hunt game in land that the British government had reserved to the Indians. 

Boone had run-ins with Indians from time to time, but nothing too violent.

Then he was hired by the Transylvania Company to widen the trail that runs through the gap into Kentucky. That was the origin of the Wilderness Road. 

Boone led a group of settlers through Cumberland Gap in 1775 and they eventually stopped at a spot beside the Kentucky River, possibly on April Fool’s Day.

I had heard so many fascinating lies about this place and about Boone when I was a kid that it has permanently damaged my mind. When I was about 11, I learned that one of my father’s distant ancestors was a distant relative of Daniel Boone.

Wow, the shock to the system must have lasted a month or more. I walked around referring to Boone as “Uncle Daniel.”

So when I found that there is actually a Fort Boonesborough Park in Kentucky, that determined the direction I’d take on this trip. Once I left Morgantown it was all new territory to me.

Stonewall Jackson Lake, the Kentucky Folk Art Museum at Morehead State University, craft beer—they were all icing. The cake, at least on the first half of the ride, was Boonesborough. Uncle Daniel, I was coming to visit.

When I got to the park, I was almost disappointed. I had seen photos that showed people in a log stockade and period costumes. But I didn’t see any sign of that.

The visitor center was closed so there was no help there. 

What I did see was a stone wall surrounding a coffin-shaped monument. It marked the site of the original fort. 

Nearby is an obelisk with plaques honoring “that gallant band of axemen, pioneers, and Indian fighters who at the risk and loss of life opened the doors of destiny to the white race in Kentucky and the West.” That was put up in 1934.

Not far away is a largely dismantled miniature golf course that still includes a cigar store Indian.

Across the road from the white race monument is a sign marking “Sycamore Hollow.” Sycamores still grow there.

When Boone’s party arrived there they began to build log shelters on the lowest part of the river bank.

Boone was a hunter who camped in this territory all winter long every year and survived. Maybe he had a touch of April Fool Fever when he got here. Who can say? 

He should have known better than to build a permanent camp on what had every appearance of a flood plain.

Col. Richard Henderson, who had organized the venture and had hired Boone, showed up three weeks later on the 20th and insisted the settlement should be built on higher ground a hundred yards or so away.

That’s where the monuments are.

Beyond the Sycamore Hollow today is a campground (on higher ground) that was loaded with trailers and RVs. The store there was open. A lady at the counter explained that the replica fort was up the hill and had a separate entrance. I needed to go back to the highway and turn left.

It was late in the day, but I got to spend an hour there.

It’s a high log stockade with blockhouses at each corner. There are cabins representing homes and displaying tools and crafts. In one blockhouse, a woman in a bonnet was making corn husk dolls. 

In one of the cabins, I startled a lady who had been making candles and had begun her end-of-day cleanup. 

A man who had been with the doll-making lady joined me in another of the blockhouses which was filled with Daniel Boone memorabilia. 

We chatted about that.

Some of the books I had read were there. So were lunchboxes, comic books, records, posters, VHS tapes, and pen knives. Much of it familiar.

Another cabin has historical artifacts. Still another cabin has iron tools. The man briefly demonstrated the use of the wood vise and a treadle lathe.

Both use foot power. Pressing a pedal brings the vise down to hold a workpiece. Pumping the treadle of the lathe pulls a rope that turns the piece being carved. A spring overhead (in this case a flexible length of wood) brings the rope and the treadle up again.

Then he asked if I’d like to toss a tomahawk. God, I’m going to play Daniel Day-Lewis in “Last of the Mohicans.” Sure, I’ll sign a waiver or anything if it lets me throw a tomahawk.

He showed me how to do it: Stand with your right foot forward, bring your right forearm forward to about 10 o’clock, and just open your hand.

He must have shown me well, because the first tomahawk hit the target and stuck. It was laugh-out-loud time.

He taught me well, but I wasn’t as good at remembering. My next three tries were all misses. One hit the axe that was in the target, another didn’t hit the target, and the last hit backwards and bounced off. 

I dunno. Maybe that’s a promising start for somebody from New Jersey.

The fort is about a half hour from Richmond, Ky., where I checked into a La Quinta Inn.  

I had dinner at a local craft beer bar called Madison Garden. The selection was all right but none of it was on draft. 

Well, there was a vanilla porter from a Kentucky outfit, but that’s like a dessert, not a beer. The other taps were mainstream commercial lagers and lights.

I had a few bottles over the course of a couple of hours. Two were from the West 6th brewery in Lexington: an OK amber a little on the light side, and a much better IPA that was nice and bitter with a bit of fragrance.

I had to try one brew because of the name. The bartender, a lady in tattoos, told me it’s a big seller for that reason. The brewer is Country Boy, also in Lexington, and it’s a blond ale called Cougar Bait. It wasn’t too sweet, and that was good, but it was way too light to follow an IPA. 

Truth, a red or amber IPA from Rhinegeist in Cincinnati, had a bit of perfume and a complex flavor. Red IPAs in general are among the most interesting beers that I’ve had.

I checked into the hotel for two nights. I was getting tired of having to pack up every morning and be out by 11 or noon.

It gave me a chance to plan the rest of the trip. I reserved tickets online for two tours at Mammoth Cave. I sorted out my notes and recollections of the previous couple of days, and sent a report on part of them.

Richmond isn’t a big town and I was running short of bars to hop. I wound up for dinner the second night at an Irish bar called the Paddy Wagon. 

I hadn’t eaten all day, so I took the bartender’s suggestion and had the bangers and mash. I needed it. The gravy may have come from a jar for all I know, but it was dark brown and savory.

Go-withs included a stout from West 6th that was good and unexpectedly dry, almost like an Irish stout. 

So that’s how I spent my Friday the 13th. 

Good luck, all.

Harry

Between a Devil and a Stone Wall

April 10-12

No shortage of colorful characters and good beer on this run.

I’ve developed a fondness, for instance, for an IPA named Devil Anse. 

It happened this way.

I walked from the Clarion Morgan to the Apothecary Ale House & Cafe. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast around 8 in the morning and this was nearly 7 p.m. 

The cafe part of the business must be an afterthought, because all the menu offered were a few sandwiches, and the bartender told me the place had run out of most of them.

So after an OK pale ale called Ready Steady Go made by a West Virginia brewer called Short Story, I headed to High Street, past the Don Knotts statue and went back to Gibbie’s. I had stopped there on my last visit to Morgantown a couple of years ago.

Devil Anse was on tap, and I asked the bartender about the name. I couldn’t make sense of it. It’s a person, she said, and wrote it down for me: Devil Anse Hatfield.

Surprise, surprise. I had actually seen that name before, years ago. I had heard it in movies, too. It’s the nickname of William Anderson Hatfield, who led his family in the blood feud against the McCoys. 

Why, it’s one of the most famous families in America. They fought a war for almost 40 years.

The IPA is made by a West Virginia brewery called Greenbrier Valley Brewing.

I’m writing this in Kentucky and am keeping my eyes open for a local McCoy ale. There are a couple of brews called Real McCoy, but they’re not from Kentucky and not related to the feud, as far as I can tell.

I had a lot of other ales, too, at Gibbie’s. Among the best were Stumptown Ales’ Lefty Lucy amber, very malty, but even so not too sweet, close but not quite an English bitter; and Greenbrier’s black IPA, which tastes like a heavily hopped stout with a burnt-chocolate flavor at the end that was a lot of fun.

Devil Anse wins, though. It’s fragrant, bitter, and sharp. 

I left Morgantown in the morning to cross West Virginia to Huntington. I got another big surprise about 60 or 70 miles on my way. There was a road sign telling me to take the next exit if I wanted to go to the Stonewall Jackson Lake State Park.

I suppressed my excitement and followed directions. Before you get to the park, though, you pass through the Stonewall Jackson Wildlife Management Area. There’s a Stonewall Jackson Dam, too. 

I couldn’t believe it. West Virginia was created because it didn’t want to side with Stonewall Jackson and his associates. What does Jack T call it? West By God Virginia. This isn’t Rebel Virginia.

Turns out, Gen. Jackson was born in a town called Clarksburg, in the present state of West Virginia, which didn’t exist when he was born. Charleston, the capital, has a Middle School named for him too.

The park contains an entire golf course, a marina, campground, resort, conference center, and who knows what all.

I was checked into the Pullman Plaza Hotel in Huntington by 3 in the afternoon. I had gotten out of bed too late to have breakfast and hadn’t had anything to eat all day.

The hotel is right next to a mall called Pullman Square. It looks like a repurposed transportation terminal. It’s a few hundred yards from the Ohio River. Maybe it was originally a boat landing and a rail station.

I wound up at a place called Black Sheep. I had a huge burrito with a fiery sauce and a few beers for breakfast. The brews were all from an outfit called Bad Shepherd. 

One was called Drowning the Dearg. “Dearg” means “red” in Irish, and this was a fine Irish-style red ale. The Loud was an IPA. Butcher’s Knob was a wild ale, slightly sour, so I had it for dessert.

Later, in the evening, I walked to the Huntington Ale House. Since I wasn’t driving, I had a couple of ales. Mountain State Brewing’s Almost Heaven amber, like the Bob Denver song, was a little sweet, but OK.

The bar had another Greenbrier Valley Brewing number on tap, Wild Trail American pale ale. As the name suggested, it had a touch of sour, which went well with the bitter of the hops.

Next day, the 12th, I took off for Kentucky. I was headed for a place that has been a goal since childhood: to visit the site of Boonesborough.

But on the way, I couldn’t pass up the Museum of Kentucky Folk Art at the Morehead University Campus. 

It’s a small gallery showing art by untrained sculptors, painters, and furniture makers. Lots of fanciful animals in wild colors, and many realistic ones too.

Favorite subjects seemed to be genre pieces—carvings, paintings, collages, etc.—depicting Adam and Eve with the serpent, visions of heaven and hell (more often hell), and Noah’s ark.

The collection of canes is spectacular, bright, shining, with lots of snakes.

There’s more, and I’ll send that later. I’m running out of steam and I’m enjoying a buzz.

Everybody be well. Love to  all.

Harry