Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for kentucky
Quilt City USA
By Linda Tancs
Quilting is, indeed, a thing, especially if you visit Paducah, Kentucky. Affectionately known as Quilt City USA, the locale hosts the National Quilt Museum. It’s fair to say that the facility is a popular attraction, greeting over 100,000 visitors each year. You’ll find quilts from 1980 to the present, over 650 quilts representing 47 states and 12 countries. The smallest quilt measures 3.75 inches square; the largest quilt is 110 inches square. The collection even includes one quilt made entirely of wood. Join them this week for Quilt Week!
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Following the Mississippi
By Linda Tancs
You may have wondered whether you can drive along the course of the Mississippi River. Yes, there’s a road for that. The Great River Road National Scenic Byway follows the course of the Mississippi River for 3,000 miles from northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, passing through 10 states. Its designation as a National Scenic Byway is in recognition of the route’s outstanding assets in the areas of culture, history, nature, recreation and scenic beauty. The different roads and highways comprising the byway are marked by a green pilot’s wheel logo to keep you on track. Watch for river-related attractions and interpretative centers. You can take in the whole route in 36 hours of straight driving, but why not stretch it out for four to 10 days and enjoy the ride.
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Bluegrass Cuisine
By Linda Tancs
You don’t have to wait until Derby season for a dive into Kentucky cuisine. Enjoy a taste of the Bluegrass State now through October 31 on the Culinary Trail across nine state parks. Each park on the trail is offering a regional meal, including favorites like goetta and burgoo. Pick up your culinary passport at your first stop, and start tasting your way through the state. Then mail your completed passport back to the Department of Tourism for a free gift!
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An Encounter With an Ark
By Linda Tancs
Noah’s ark is the storied vessel discussed in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, built by Noah to save his family and a menagerie from a world-engulfing flood. While scientists debate the existence of the real McCoy at Mount Ararat in Turkey, you can witness your own real-life model of the life-saving ship at the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky. The museum features a full-size ark, built according to the dimensions given in the Bible, spanning 510 feet in length, 85 feet in width and 51 feet in height. Built from standing dead timber by skilled Amish craftsmen, the ark contains three decks of exhibits, including life-like animal sculptures. The site also includes exotic live animals from around the world in Ararat Ridge Zoo.
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The Original Sin City
By Linda Tancs
It may be hard to fathom the Bluegrass State’s fair city of Newport as a precursor to Las Vegas’s baptism as Sin City. But so it was. In the 1920s and 1930s, the mob ruled locales like Newport, Kentucky, making millions in casinos, bootlegging and other illicit activities and earning the area’s designation as Sin City. Even the gangsters’ weapon of choice, the Tommy Gun, was invented by a Newport native, John T. Thompson—much to his chagrin, of course, having been developed for use by the military during World War I but delivered too late to be of value then. His historic home, Thompson House, is now an entertainment venue.
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Where Louisville Begins
By Linda Tancs
Situated on 55 rolling acres just six miles upriver from downtown Louisville, Kentucky, Locust Grove is a 1790 Georgian mansion that welcomed a generation of American luminaries, such as U.S. presidents James Monroe and Andrew Jackson, John James Audubon, Cassius Marcellus Clay and explorers Lewis and Clark. A National Historic Landmark, the homestead was built by William and Lucy Clark Croghan. Lucy’s brother, General George Rogers Clark, was a Revolutionary War hero and founder of Louisville. Daily tours offer a step back in time to the early days of Louisville’s history.
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In the Heart of Horse Country
By Linda Tancs
In the heart of horse and bourbon country in Lexington, Kentucky, is Gratz Park. One of the city’s oldest neighborhoods and a historic district, it’s named after early Lexington businessman Benjamin Gratz. Other luminaries who once graced this area north of Main Street include Mary Todd Lincoln, Horace Holley and horseman John Gaines. Colorful houses from the 1800s join stately dwellings like the Hunt-Morgan House, built for millionaire businessman John Wesley Hunt. His great-grandson Thomas Hunt Morgan was the first Kentuckian to win a Nobel Prize for medicine. The home is also the site of the Alexander T. Hunt Civil War Museum, a great resource for Civil War researchers and enthusiasts.
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Wall to Wall in Paducah
By Linda Tancs
One of UNESCO’s Creative Cities, Paducah, Kentucky, is graced with a floodwall that protects its historic downtown from surges of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. But as you might suspect, this isn’t just an ordinary floodwall. Like Portsmouth to the north, it includes a number of painted murals. In fact, three city blocks (at Water, Jefferson and Washington) boast more than 50 life-sized panoramic murals by renowned artist Robert Dafford and his team, representing such crowning moments of the city’s history as its role in the riverboat trade and the day in 1803 when the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery passed by Paducah on their trek to find the Northwest Passage. Guided tours are given on request.
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Grand, Gloomy and Peculiar
By Linda Tancs
Grand, gloomy and peculiar. That’s what cave guide Stephen Bishop said in the 1800s about south central Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave. Spelunkers might not agree with that assessment, but mammoth is certainly an apt description, considering it’s the world’s longest known cave system, the oldest part of which began forming over 10 million years ago. Over 400 miles of this national park have been explored; the main passageway alone is seven miles long. Short on time? Take the popular two-hour Domes & Dripstones Tour. As for that cave guide? He’s buried at the park’s Old Guide’s Cemetery.
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Boone’s Forest
By Linda Tancs
A legendary huntsman and pioneer, Daniel Boone dared to cross the treacherous Appalachians to explore Kentucky’s great wilderness. A great part of that terrain is commemorated in his name, the Daniel Boone National Forest. Over 700,000 acres of rugged terrain embraced by forested ridges, narrow ravines and thousands of miles of sandstone cliffs attract nearly five million visitors annually. Those guests may not need to trap, hunt and fish like Boone, but they enjoy the foothills nonetheless by backpacking, camping, picnicking, rock climbing and boating. Not sure where to start? Try the 269-mile Sheltowee Trace National Recreation Trail, which extends across the length of the forest.
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