Kentucky - Sept. 30th

Louisville South KOA, Shepherdsville
Monday, 30 September 2019

Before I left Ft. Massac State Park in Metropolis IL, I had yet another weird encounter with the campground "host."  Right at 8:00 AM I left my campsite #5 (right across the 1-lane street from the host site at #2) and drove at 10 mph (campground speed) along the one-lane road to leave the campground.  The "host" was walking his dog on that road and stopped me to ask hostilely why I was driving around the campground, was I looking for a place to camp?  (At 8:00 AM?)  I reminded him that I'd spent the last 4 days in #5, and he said oh yes of course.  And I reminded him that I was the one whose site he'd given away the other day, and he looked embarrassed.

He excused himself, much as he did the other day, on the basis that things had been crazy lately.  But in these completely weird encounters, he's never once apologized to me for any inconvenience, let alone for his weird accusations about how it was my fault he gave the site away because I should have left something (besides the notice proving I'd paid $40 for the site) to prove I was coming back, or that I was doing something wrong by driving in the campground at 8:00 AM.  I don't fall into the Usual Suspect categories of being a person of color, a younger person, someone driving a substandard vehicle, someone who looked poor - and instead am visibly an ordinary white female senior citizen.  Since when has that been a suspect category?  I'll tell you, I'm glad to be leaving that campground though sorry it was my last taste of Illinois.

Kentucky - my 19th state

route on Monday the 30th

Welcome to Kentucky!
Unbridled Spirit

shows KY's new logo
old internet photo - Beshear stopped begin Gov. in 2015

The state line is actually in the Ohio River and I was a little surprised there wasn't any sign on the bridge noting that fact.  We do it all the time in the south.

The Ohio River is a big river, and the bridge was a very long bridge, and of course I got nervous.  But I kept reminding myself it was attached to land on the other side, and I looked only at the road and not at the river (too bad I missed the view) and made it across okay.

I'm a little surprised the highway sign above doesn't say so, but Kentucky is proud to be one of the 4 states that are actually commonwealths - Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania being the others.

I passed a sign saying Paducah, on the Ohio River, is a Foreign Trade Zone.  Never having heard of such a thing, I looked it up and learned that it's, essentially, a duty-free zone.  But unlike those in the airport, it's a program started as part of New Deal legislation in 1934 in hopes of spurring jobs and investment.  In Paducah they tout the fact that a product that's assembled in the zone might have a lower duty assessed than would have been charged on its imported component parts.  I don't know if it's worked or not, but I'll come back and visit Paducah later this month.

I stopped at the Welcome Center and got lots of information about sights to see.  I asked the young woman working there what she liked best about living in Kentucky and there was a long pause.  Then she said the cost of living's not bad.  And there's a lot to see, she said, though she's not the scenic-route type - she likes to get where she's going.  I didn't get the impression she got around much.  Maybe she works so hard or has so many family obligations she hasn't had a chance.

On today's drive crossing half the state I passed over several good-sized rivers - Tennessee River, Cumberland River, Green River (it's green) and others.  Most of the drive took me through lots of hills and trees - very pretty, even on the interstate.  Really a change from flatter Illinois cropland.

Speaking of which, I heard on the radio that when the leaves on soybean plants turn yellow and fall off, that's when soybeans are ready to harvest.  Now I understand all those yellow fields I saw. 

And speaking of yellow leaves, I also noticed that the trees along the highway were all turning yellow and brown.  Still quite a bit of green, but I'm guessing a month ago they were all a deep beautiful green.  Autumn is definitely coming.

Though you wouldn't know it from the temperature.  The radio said it was 96° by mid-afternoon when I got to Louisville.  And it's supposed to keep being that warm the rest of the week.

I heard on the radio something about concern that the identity of the Ukraine phone call whistleblower is at risk, and that whistleblowers in the past have suffered serious consequences when they were identified.  One called in to say that years later he still had trouble finding work because of the label attached to him.  Others noted that whistleblowers got nothing from their actions except believing that they were doing the right thing.  Someone said, "When you take a stand, be prepared to stand alone." 

I passed a sign saying I was missing the birthplace in Rosine of Bill Monroe.  Father of Bluegrass.  The acknowledged inventor of bluegrass music, actually.  I love bluegrass music.

The farther across the state I got, the more I started seeing horses.  And bourbon distilleries.  Kentucky calls itself The Horse Capital of the World.  And the Birthplace of Bourbon. 

They've got Congressional backing on that last one, with a 1964 declaration that bourbon is America's only native spirit.  They claim 68 distilleries producing 95% of the world's bourbon.  Ironically, more than half of Kentucky's counties are "dry," including Bourbon County. 

I hear Kentucky has liquor laws even more convoluted than Texas's, including "moist" counties (when a "dry" county includes a city that has voted itself "wet").  Maybe I should learn to prefer bourbon for the next month.  Sounds like that'll be easy enough to find.

I passed a sign for the turn to Ft. Knox, which I'd forgotten is here.  Wondering about tours, I looked it up and learned, basically, not a chance.  The vault has been opened for outsiders exactly twice: (1) in 1974, rumors that all the gold was gone were so persistent they opened it to journalists and Congressional folks; (2) in 2017, they opened it to Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin, the KY governor, and Congressional folks, though their website doesn't list a reason.

gold bullion, per the internet

It was built in 1936 as a bullion depository.  The vault that I won't get to see has been used to store more than gold.  During WWII, it held the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  At times it's also stored valuables for other countries, such as England's Magna Carta.

Kentucky is divided almost in half by the time zone boundary.  In Louisville, I'm on Eastern time, rather than the Central time I was in in Paducah. 

I left Metropolis at 8:00 CDT and got to the KOA a half-hour south of Louisville at 2:30 EDT.  If I'd stayed in Illinois until the 1st - say in the parking lot at Harrah's Casino in Metropolis - I'd have had to leave about 6:30 this morning to have reached the vet's office by 1:30.  With stops and a slower than usual speed, it just takes me a whole lot longer to get places than other people experience.  Well, they say we slow down with old age.  I say I'm learning to savor the moment.