Colonel Sanders and Daniel Boone – Both Pioneers

Ahhhh Kentucky – known for the Kentucky Derby, bourbon, KFC, and Daniel Boone.  We’d enjoyed bourbon in Louisville, thoroughbreds and Derby winners in Lexington, and now it was time to complete the other Kentucky items on our list as we travelled from Lexington towards Cumberland Gap National Park.

We stopped for lunch in Berea KY which was also nice enough to serve up a heaping dose of spring!  Berea is the home of historic Boone Tavern Hotel and Restaurant (which it turns out has nothing to do with Daniel Boone) and Berea College, of more interest as it was founded by abolitionist Reverend John Gregg Fee in 1853 as a school dedicated to educating both sexes and all races equally.  This classic, eastern-U.S.-style, brick campus is compact and everywhere perennials were in bloom.        

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Next stop was Corbin KY, the birthplace of Harland Sanders Original Recipe fried chicken. 

The café and museum were closed, which was sad because as the Zac Brown Band says,

“You know I like my chicken fried, 
Cold beer on a Friday night
A pair of jeans that fit just right
And the radio up.” 

Best we could do was the sign in front that provided some interesting information on how his Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken gained its notoriety!

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By late afternoon, we’d arrived in the town of Middlesboro KY just outside the Cumberland Gap National Park.  Their cute main street is surrounded by hills of green dotted with charming little homes.  It was fun to drive through.

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Inside the Cumberland Gap National Park, we hiked Tri-State Peak with Bailey.  This 2.5 mile, 635 foot climb offers views at the top of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia so if you strike a classic game of Twister pose, you can position yourself in all 3 states at once.  Kind of fun!  We also got a sense during the hike of how densely wooded the Appalachians are. 

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Bailey entertained us over lunch on our way back down the hill.  She’ll do almost anything for cheese!

We had hoped to drive to Pinnacle Peak, but before reaching the top, a sign warned that no vehicle over 21 feet was allowed beyond that point.  We parked the RV at the lower parking lot and Doug rode his bicycle 5.6 miles with nearly 1000 feet of climbing to the peak.    

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We decided to treat ourselves to a dinner out (a rare occurrence) so we stopped at the town of Cumberland Gap and ate at an outdoor café called Gap Creek Coffee House and Café.  Full and happy, we walked around town a bit before returning to the campground.

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The following day we stopped first at the Cumberland Gap Visitor Center.  One small room is packed with information about how critical the Cumberland Gap was to pioneers expanding west.  Finding a way  across the dense forest and nearly continuous mountains of the Appalachians was no easy feat at 600 miles long and 50 miles wide!  For thousands of years, the Cumberland Gap, nearly the only east-west valley through the entire length of the Appalachians, had provided a route and path beaten down by bison that became a wilderness road used by the Cherokee and Shawnee.  In 1769, Daniel Boone led an expedition that mapped the trail and established it as a route for colonists anxious to push towards the west.  An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 thousand pioneers  travelled this road as they began to migrate west between 1775 and 1810.  Several movies at the visitor center discussed the difficulty in the journey and the legendary role Danial Boone played in escorting so many through the Gap.  Despite many heroic deeds, he was also a mess of a man; plagued by financial troubles, captured by Native Americans multiple times, lost a son and two brothers in Native American skirmishes, and had a daughter kidnapped – all in the name of settling Kentucky.   When I saw a book by Daniel Boone’s wife titled “My Blessed Wretched Life” in the gift shop, Doug teased that he hoped I wouldn’t be writing something similar related to our RV adventures. 

Neither one of us purchased or read that book, but Doug did borrow a Kindle book from the library about Daniel Boone that he liked, following this excursion.

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This was our last major stop in Kentucky before heading south again through eastern Tennessee.  We were able to see a lot more of Kentucky than I expected, and we really enjoyed it!