Kentucky - Day 30 - farther south in the Appalachians

Carr Creek State Park
Wednesday, 30 October 2019

today's route

I didn’t leave the previous campground until about 11:00 this morning, trying to get in as much work as I could while I still had a wifi signal.  The reason I had the luxury of waiting is that online directions put tonight’s campground at only about an hour away.  Even though that likely translates to 2 hours for me, it still means I have extra time.

I started the drive by trying to find a grocery store, and my online directions were immediately rendered useless by me having forgotten that when I came here 2 days ago I wasn’t on the roads Google said I’d be on.  So this morning I navigated mostly by, when having a choice between 2 roads, taking the one not labeled “north” and continuing to go in the general direction I thought would get me back on the AAA map (since I was obviously nowhere near the Google map).

Maybe people who get directions sent to their smart phones (I’ve been out of touch so long I’ve forgotten what that’s called - is it MapQuest?) have a different experience.  But even with my occasional times of near panic at being lost, I’d still choose doing it this way.  I’ve never much liked being dictated to and at least this way I feel like I’ve got choices.  And I always get found eventually.

Including this morning.  Thanks to the AAA map maker.

Meanwhile I was driving along roads through beautiful high hills, covered in beautiful trees with leaves turning colors.  Any given hill had at least 20 different shades of colors on it – multiple reds and oranges and yellows and greens – just gorgeous.  They’re mountains, really, just with rounded tops so I think of them as hills.  They seem almost as if the earth rose up and then folded itself vertically and folded itself again, so I’d pass a hill and behind it I’d see several more folded into a valley, all blazing with color – even on this dull drizzly day.  Even the clouds got into the act, getting themselves caught on the trees halfway up a hill, so there were layers of clouds interspersed among the trees and moving in down the valleys.

“October is the treasurer of the year” is the beginning to a poem I found a lifetime ago and think of every year.  I looked it up just now and found it's from Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of my favorite poets.  And if you've never seen this, it's at this link, and far more wonderful than I remembered.  https://genius.com/Paul-laurence-dunbar-october  He's right.  Treasures everywhere I look.

I drove past a business called Kinzer Drilling Company that had a tower in front of their building, complete with a silvered pointed top like a drill.

Along this road I saw several signs saying, “Trucks use lower gear.”  They were way overreacting.  In Pennsylvania and West Virginia, when they post those signs they mean it.  In Kentucky, nobody needs to use a lower gear as far as I can tell.  I and the trucks I saw ahead of me all just tapped our brakes from time to time and we got down the hill just fine.

I decided tonight would be the night I’d celebrate Halloween my way.  Back in the ‘80s, I discovered my stepchildren had never carved pumpkins and decided that was a contribution I could make to their knowledge of life as it’s lived outside Alaska.  Each year we’d invite over a friend and her kids and we’d all carve pumpkins and order out for pizza and have prizes for most creative, scariest, etc.

In the ‘90s, when I had my own house in Olympia, a friend came over and we carved pumpkins and ordered out for pizza.  When she couldn’t come I’d play a movie, usually “Soapdish.”

In the ‘00s when I moved to Austin with my mom, I was trying at first to knock her out of her depression and included pumpkin-carving as an essential cheerful activity.  And we’d order out for pizza and I’d play “Soapdish.”  Momma pronounced this the dumbest movie she’d ever seen.

For those who haven’t found this movie, “Soapdish” is a send-up of soap operas, played to the hilt by a great cast, some of whom got their start in soap operas.  Starring Sally Field and Kevin Klein and Robert Downey Jr. and Elisabeth Shue and Carrie Fisher and Cathy Moriarity, with a cameo for Garry Marshall.  It is completely dopey and very funny.  No brains involved in the watching of this movie.  I love it.

I didn’t figure I’d be able to find a place that would deliver a pizza to me in the campground (without an enormous delivery charge), so I found a place online that was on the way to the campground – Hot Rod’s Pizza – and stopped off there to pick one up.  Been a long time since I’ve had a real pizza, and even though it was only lukewarm by the time I got to eat it, it was still really good.  And I watched “Soapdish.”  No pumpkins and no candy.  But when I have a house again I’ll carve pumpkins.  This is my way of keeping my traditions alive.  Life’s an adjustment.  Always.