Kentucky - Day 22

Taylorsville Lake State Park

Tuesday, 22 October 2019

Yesterday afternoon I started coughing so bad (from asthma) it made me feel a little sick and I decided to stay in the campground today and get some rest, rather than going to Frankfort as I’d planned.

I didn’t feel a whole lot better this morning and was glad I’d already made the decision to stay.

The campsite I have is level and comfortable and the wifi signal I get is at least intermittent so I could get a little work done.  Plus, there are a lot of areas where I can walk the dogs and there aren’t many other dogs yet this week.

I ended up spending the entire day trying to find places to stay for the rest of the month.  I’d already found that campgrounds in the mountains seemed to be booked up, which is why I haven’t been over there so far.  But I’ve only got just over a week left in my month and still a big chunk of the state I haven’t seen.

First, I decided I’d stay in this park longer than I’d planned.  My reservation ends tomorrow, and I’ll have to change campsites, but I decided not to push myself too much, to keep my health intact.  So I’ll go visit Frankfort tomorrow, come back here, wait in camp an extra day, and then visit Lexington on the way to somewhere else.  And it was where the somewhere else would be that I started with.

What I did was check each state park in the mountain region to see which sites they had where the dogs and I could be comfortable, and then when those sites would be available.  In several parks, there weren’t any places that fit.

Next I tried to choose parks that were on a somewhat logical route through the area, that had sites I liked that were available when I needed them.  That eliminated more parks.

I finally came up with a plan for every night except this Friday.  No state park anywhere at all near Lexington had a space available for Friday night, including this one.  So then I tried to find a private park (which there aren’t all that many of in Kentucky, surprisingly) that wasn’t advertising itself as removed from the bustle of daily life – translation: no wifi service.  I finally found one that might work, called them, and they said yes, they had wifi service and yes, they had a space available and no, I didn’t need to make a reservation (which I thought sounded ominous).

And to finish it all off, I found a KOA in Tennessee that seemed convenient to the Cumberland Gap, which I planned to go through when leaving Kentucky, and that had the space I asked for available for the first few days of November (which also sounded ominous, because I’d have thought that particular site would be a popular one).

So it took from 7:30 AM until 3:15 PM (with time out for dog-walking and lunch), but I’ve got us reservations for almost 2 more weeks.

During the course of this, I discovered one state park that had only one space available and would accept a reservation no shorter than 7 days.  When I called the park to ask why, they told me the one space was available only because someone had called to cancel just this morning, and the reason for the 7-day booking period was their special Halloween celebration this weekend.  They said not only are they fully booked this year, they’re already sold out for next year.  I guess this is what Halloween has morphed into, since traditional Trick-or-Treating has gotten so weird.

Despite all this, I still feel much better this afternoon than I did yesterday and am glad I decided not to go out sightseeing today.

I've been seeing these tiny purple flowers in much of the state.  I don't know what they are, but they're really cheerful.

This is the official state license plate.  I've seen a variety of specialty plates, but no personalized plates, and the vast majority of cars have this one.