Sunday, 27 October 2019
[The font below is different than usual because it's from my word processing program.]
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| today's route |
Morning
in this campground was about as dreary, thanks to the overcast skies
and drizzle, as the previous evening. The good thing about it was
that everyone slept late, including my next door neighbors who seemed
to be companions of half the people in our part of the campground,
and who had extra people arriving all evening to stay with them (I
saw a large tent this morning beside their large camper, which
explained where they put all those extra people). They were only
just starting to wake up when I got us on the road.
Natural Bridge and Red River Gorge
I
was hit with a dose of reality this morning when I realized, according to
park literature, that the fastest route to the Natural Bridge was a
.75-mile trail, each way, with some steep climbs along the way. And
that pets were prohibited on the trails.
It
was still drizzling off and on this
morning,
the ground was muddy and slick in places, and I honestly just didn’t
want to make a 1½-mile
round trip hike on uneven terrain if my dogs couldn’t even get the
benefit of the exercise.
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| Natural Bridge (internet photo) |
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| Red River Gorge (internet photo) |
Sadly,
I gave all that up and substituted instead a stop in the town of
Morehead, along the road to my next campground.
The
drive
I
drove more than 100 miles today, most of it on the interstate. And I
have to say it’s the most beautiful interstate highway I’ve ever
seen. Rounded mountains covered to the tops with trees, all with
leaves changing colors, occasional farms and small communities,
occasional rock walls where the mountains have been blasted to make
the roadway more level, black dirt where there’s no ground cover. If we’d had full sun today, the beauty would have been staggering.
Morehead
I’m
not sure what it was that drew my attention to Morehead, but when I
looked into the notes I’d made doing research before this trip, I
found a mention of a historical marker commemorating a feud war there
so decided to take a look.
As
so often happens, the
online directions to the historical marker were sketchy (at best) and
I wasn’t at all sure I’d be able to find it. We drove into town, which was connected to the interstate by a long winding mountain road that
was fortunately well-built and 2 lanes wide each way.
We
drove around a little bit, and I finally pulled over into a parking
area near the local Visitor Center figuring, even though they were
closed, they wouldn’t get too upset about me stopping, being a visitor and all. The dogs
wanted to walk and it was lunchtime anyway.
I
saw a row of these beautiful bushes as tall as I am. I’ve seen
them everywhere I've traveled and have no idea what they’re called, but
that color is just gorgeous.
And just around the hedge of these bushes at the Visitor Center was the historical marker – not at
all where the sketchy directions suggested, but I’d found it
anyway! Very interesting message.
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| side 1 |
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| side 2 |
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| marker at the foot of the historical marker (Gracie's rear end is blocking it) |
There’s
a more thorough account of this oddball feud at this link - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_County_War - though I think even this account leaves out too many details for the chain of events to make much sense. In fact, as written, it makes the feud even more absurd. Other accounts, though, think the roots were in leftover feelings from the Civil War, when Kentuckians were nearly evenly split in their loyalties.
Nearby
I found something else interesting that I’d never heard about – a
Moonlight School (see below). This historical marker explains a little bit about
them and there’s more at this link. www.appalachianhistory.net/moonlight-schools
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| Cora Wilson Stewart Moonlight School |
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| explains the school |
Right across the street from all this is the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, which made me wonder - "traditional" meaning what? Mountain music? Classical music? Rock & roll (traditional to my generation, after all)? It turns out to be part of Morehead State University and sounds very interesting. www.moreheadstate.edu/kctm
Unsurprisingly, Morehead is the home of Morehead State University, which is much larger than I expected, with 10,000 enrolled in several campuses. It also has its own NPR station which, on Sundays, plays a lot of good bluegrass music. An especially great one they played was “Richard’s Rag,” written and performed by Fiddlin’ Billy Hurt, which you can hear for yourself at this link. https://www.youtube.com
I
passed Root-A-Bakers Bakery, specializing in desserts. It took me a
minute to figure out the pun (my brain seems to be slowing down).
To
the campground
Once
again, the directions to the campground were sketchy. For some
reason, the state of Kentucky provides lots of nice campgrounds and
then refuses to say how to get to them. People still manage – I
managed – but it was partly a matter of luck. And online programs
weren’t a lot of help either. Google refuses
to acknowledge that the campgrounds are
often a long way away from the business office or the resort lodge
and won’t tell me how to get where I need to go.
And
again, the roads today
weren’t labeled as Google said they’d be and signs for the state
park were only occasional, not always where I was supposed to make a
turn. For being only about 4 miles from the interstate, this park
was hard to find.
When
I did find it, I
found
a nice wooded
park
that was rapidly emptying out – folks going home after a weekend of
camping. A
lot of them had left behind leftover food they’d dumped on the
ground rather than take it home, something I've not really seen before. The parks prohibit this practice –
it’s not the help to wildlife that people seem to believe – but
the whole time I was there I didn’t see anyone in authority at all.
The site I’d chosen online was about as uneven and unlevel as possible,
with
mud on either side of the broken pavement. I spent at least 5 minutes trying to find some way to position the
RV that we could live with for the night, and finally settled for the
least undesirable
of the choices. I’d have been glad to move to another site since
so many were empty, but with no ranger, I couldn’t tell which ones
weren’t already reserved. People often come in late – even after
dark – so I couldn’t just take any old one. So there we were.
Plenty
of wildlife, too. We saw lots of deer while we were here. Nice to
see them even though they make walking the dogs a lot harder. Still,
it was a pleasant environment and it was nice to find an emptied-out
campground for a change.
And
I managed to cap off the day by losing both my contact lenses. I
took both of them out of my eyes and put them in their case, but hadn’t put
the lids on because I still needed to add the soaking solution. That’s when I made a sudden movement that caught the case and
flipped it completely over, and both lenses went flying out.
All
I knew was that they were most likely somewhere in the bathroom. Knowing they could be on my clothes or on my feet or anywhere on the
floor, I moved extremely slowly and carefully. My goal was to get to
the closet to get the little flashlight I keep in a pocket of the
reflective vest I wear when I walk the dogs in the dark. And it’s
the flashlight that found them. They were both on the floor in the
3” wide gap between the sink and the shower stall, about 5”
apart. My relief was bottomless.
Odd
day.
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