Wild and Wonderful West Virginia is a beautiful drive
through the mountains. Sort of. There are lots of things that are beautiful…
we took a little side trip up to the New River Gorge and got to see the New River
Bridge. Beautiful! And Banger made it down the 162 wooden steps
to the look out point for the bridge and back up again! Pretty impressive when you are about 10
inches tall.
But the thing about West Virginia is that you go through
these strings of industrial towns… mostly coal mining towns, but some other
stuff, like the DuPont plant. It’s a
little peculiar because there are a lot of supposedly distinct towns, but
really its just clusters of residential areas every couple of miles. Anyway… not so beautiful.
We did, however, stop to get some scratch off lottery
tickets because who doesn’t love a good scratch ticket? As you can see, they had a pretty awesome
one… Git-R-Won with Larry the Cable Guy.
And I did, in fact, git-r-won! So
we immediately bought another ticket and lost that three bucks.
Guess we succumbed to Larry’s temptation.
So we make it to Charleston and there is a shocking dearth
of pet friendly hotels. And, to be
honest, not that many things that looked super interesting. So Banger gave Charleston the bird and off we
went.
As we were leaving West Virginia, we (finally) looked up a
website about cross country trips. Turns
out the path we had chosen, 64 West, its called “the Loneliest Road,” and the
loneliest part of the road is West Virginia.
Procrastination bites us in the butt again.
K then got it in his head that if we had made it that far,
he didn’t want to stay in West Virginia.
On to Kentucky!
Kentucky is a pretty charming little state! Except for its hotels. They leave a little to be desired. And here is our first go round with my
hesitation with some less costly hotels.
(K calls me a hotel snob. I just
think I have doubts about places that look like they could be cooking meth next
door. Just saying.) We pulled off to look at a couple of places
and got right back onto the highway.
Sorry, but I’d really hate to be murdered in my sleep. In the end, after looking at a couple of
places , we found a decent room. And
yes, we are those people that occasionally ask to see a hotel room before
booking it. And by we, I mean me.
Part of Kentucky’s charm?
A vending machine selling Kentucky’s own soda, Ale 8, for 50 cents. (I actually just had to look to see if there
was still a cent sign on the keyboard.
Guess not.) And not only is Ale 8
a yummy ginger ale… it came in a glass bottle!
Pretty great.
Since we drove so far unexpectedly, we were pretty tired, so
just wanted to get dinner and watch some TV in the hotel. We went to Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken and
uncovered a family rift of epic proportion.
Epic like the split bwetween the brothers that began Adidas and
Puma. Lee and his uncle, Sanders,
developed a chicken recipe together, including pressure cooking the
chicken. Yep, appparecntly good ole
Colonel Sanders has some skeletons in the closet! You see, Colonel Sanders wanted to sell off
the company and Lee didn’t want to sell out to corporate vultures. So he went off on his own, modified his
recipe a little bit, and created (a much less successful) rival. How did we learn all of this? The history was framed on the wall. And on the bag. A little nicer terms, but the undertones were
there.
Our last little bit of Kentucky charm was right there in
that Lee’s Famous Chicken restaurant.
You see, they have a dinner buffet. (Like some KFC’s, but hey, who is keeping
score?) One of the patrons, a more
portly gentleman who appeared to be a regular, seemed pretty serious about his
fried chicken.
While we were fumbling at the counter deciding what chicken
to get (Famous? Crispy ‘n Spicy? Its not
a decision to be taken lightly), the man came up. He seemed a bit frustrated, but retained his
southern graces as he reminded the girl that they were out of chicken on the
buffet.
Moments later, as the girl behind the counter, who looked
like she enjoyed some fried chicken herself and not so much the green beans
that she was recommending to us, was taking our order, up he came again. Here is things get a little bit fuzzy. We couldn’t necessarily make out the
disgruntled mumblings of a man who hadn’t had fried chicken in a couple of
minutes, but the message was clear. He
wasn’t’ messing about anymore.
The poor man finally got his chicken and I watched as he
loaded another four pieces to his plate.
I happened to glance at his table, where he had four empty plates. You do the math. Charming, no?
Ok, its at least impressive.
You have to admit that.
Tomorrow, I am on the search for my own Holy Grail. Yes, ladies and gentlemen… WE ARE GOING TO
THE MAKER’S MARK DISTILLERY!
Total miles traveled: 460
Days on the road: 2
Miles left to go: 1340 ish
No comments:
Post a Comment