The Bluegrass State

When I was younger my uncle once told me, “The older you get, the faster time goes.”  Back then I thought he was nuts, but now believe he may very well have been onto something.  No. 10 on my Bucket List reads “Tour the capitol building of all 50 states.”  I had been making great strides through the years since first formulating the plan in 1999.  Would you believe, though, the last one I saw was in 2008?  Yes, I’ve come to realize that time does indeed fly.  Gotta work on that list!  The opportunity presented itself over Labor Day weekend.  Grab a partner in crime, cash in points for a hotel stay and gas, go.  Kentucky here we come!

I drove to Mark’s place the night before and we hit the road early the next morning.  I admittedly was neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed, but excited to be embarking upon another exploratory adventure.  Mapquest indicated it was nearly a five-hour journey from Toledo to Kentucky’s capital city of Frankfort, but once on the road Morris A. Wellington (the GPS I received as a recent birthday gift and named after a previous Iowan adventure) told us we’d be there in just four hours.  Love it!

After we crossed the state line from Ohio, we stopped at the Visitor’s Center.  We had been in the southwestern corner of Kentucky when returning home from a visit to Little Rock and Memphis in 2008, but our current trip was thrown together at the eleventh hour.  Aside from a couple of must-sees on our agenda, we really had no idea of what there was in the north and south central regions of the commonwealth. 

Yep, you read that right.  Kentucky is one of four states in the U.S. to use the term “commonwealth.”  (Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia are the others.)  A commonwealth is defined as a community of people acting in common interest.  Though the term has no legal meaning, its use is traditional.   

We ended up winging it for most of our trip.  Since the mercury was pushing 103 that weekend, we opted for air-conditioned comfort and did a lot of driving the back roads of the scenic central areas.  The lovely field of wildflowers at the VC was the first clue as to what was in store.

This Kentuckian water tower also hinted at what was to come.  Love that Southern drawl!

The topography began to change from fast-paced interstates to passageways cut through limestone ridges leading to rolling farmland. 

Unfamiliar yellow crops begged an exchange similar to one of my favorite Steve Martin-Bill Murray SNL skits:

“What the hell is THAT?”

“I don’t know WHAT the hell that is.”

“What in the HELL is that?”

“I don’t know.  What the hell IS that?”

“Oh, I know what that is …”

I finally figured out they were tobacco fields!

When Kentucky became the fifteenth state to join the Union in 1792, its economy flourished with the production of tobacco, the state’s main cash crop.  Today it remains one of the biggest tobacco industries, as was evident by the fields and fields we saw during our travels.

Tobacco leaves are first harvested when they start to yellow and are then transferred for curing.  The length and method of the process varies depending upon the desired end result.  Air-cured tobacco is allowed to dry over a period of four to eight weeks.  Low in sugar and high in nicotine, this produces cigars.  

Fire-curing in tobacco barns results in pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff. 

I found the whole tobacco thing fascinating.  No, I wasn't smoking any of it.  We’re Yanks.  We don’t grow this stuff back home. 

We noticed that most of the barns of Kentucky also sport quilt patterns.

And hurray … while leisurely driving through the country, we found a couple of Kentucky’s timbered tunnels.  Covered bridges were first built across the state’s rivers and creeks in the late 1700s, but didn’t become popular until after 1814.  While there were once hundreds of these architectural beauties, only 13 now remain.  Many of them were destroyed during the Civil War.

Franklin County’s only covered bridge spans the north fork of Elkhorn Creek. 

The Howe truss of the Switzer Covered Bridge extends 120 feet and was built in 1855 by George Hockensmith. 

Each entrance has a sawtooth edge and the lattice is pinned with wooden pegs called trunnels.  This structure was closed to traffic in 1954.

Mt. Zion Covered Bridge, also called Beech Fork Covered Bridge because it crosses the Beech Fork Creek,

is the longest multi-span bridge in Kentucky at 211 feet.

The 1865 bridge is built of yellow pine and features a Burr truss—an arch of wood sandwiched between two posts and named for Theodore Burr who patented the design in 1804.  This bridge is also closed to traffic.

After Kentucky became a state in 1792, five commissioners were appointed to choose a location for its capital.  A number of communities competed for the honor, but Frankfort outbid them all.  Persuading factors, according to early history, included the offer of Andrew Holmes’ log house as the capitol for seven years, a number of town lots, £50 worth of locks and hinges, 10 boxes of glass, 1500 pounds of nails, and $3,000 in gold!  It has remained the capital city ever since.

Downtown Frankfort is nestled in a valley along the banks of the Kentucky River.  The historic buildings of the town are well preserved and house antique shops, coffee houses and restaurants;

the state capitol and executive mansion are across the waterway. 

En route to a capitol tour (a more in-depth account will follow in the next post), I made Mark pull over in one of the uptown neighborhoods.  I know the work of Frank Lloyd Wright when I see it! 

Sure enough, the only structure of the great architect erected in Kentucky is the Rev. Jesse R. Zeigler House.  The design for the residence came about after a chance shipboard meeting of Zeigler with Wright in 1910; construction of the prairie house began later that year.  Today it is privately owned and not available to tour, but I’m glad we happened upon it.

The scenic drive from Frankfort to Lexington, Kentucky’s second largest city which is known as the Horse Capital of the world, is famous for its pastures. 

This region is truly a horse lover’s paradise with its sprawling breeding farms

and thoroughbreds grazing on Kentucky bluegrass.

The grass for which the state is named of course isn’t really blue; it’s green.  In the spring, however, the blue-purple buds lend a bluish tint to the landscape when viewed from a distance.

We also visited a couple of Kentucky’s national parks (and scored stamps in my National Parks Passport!), but that too warrants its own post.  More soon …

Though we did cover a lot of ground during our visit to the Bluegrass State, as I write and relive this adventure I realize how much we didn’t see.  But you can’t do it all in just a few days and that sweltering heat had a way of beating us down.  Our energy was zapped, we were a tad bit crabby and ready to go home.  Someday I will return to Kentucky to discover even more of its treasures, but for now I have successfully checked off another item on my Bucket List.

20 states down; 30 to go!