August 23, 2017
Carter Caves State Park Resort
For nearly a year I have been watching and participating on a popular RV site called iRV2.com. The site has all kinds of information from how to do repairs to how to buy an RV. Among the many threads on this site I frequent a morning group. The group is very jovial and helpful as well as good friends. I count myself privileged to have run into these folks on line. A year or so ago a woman named Lynne started organizing a meet and greet which took place last week and this week here at Carter Caves State Park Resort/
It was a good time with some communal meals and really nice people. I borrowed this drone photo (below) from my new friend Stan's post on iRV2.
(Click any photo for a better view)
Most of the group left this morning but there a few malingerers left including us. Martha and I have been on the road the better part of a week before arriving here on the 20th. Our first two days were spent relaxing and catching up on sleep. But today we did some exploring. The roads here are perfect for motorcycling with many, many twisty roads and great elevation changes.
We spent the afternoon at Echo Valley Winery eating excellent lunches and tasting wine. Then we took the "long way" home with a "Nichols Shortcut" (a family inside joke). The scenery was very pastoral and quite beautiful.
The views from the winery
Martha decided that today she was in the mood to take photos. So we explored Kentucky back roads and went "Barn Storming," well kinda...
Tobacco Drying Shed
The Home Place
A "Generations" Farm
Time is winning
Crooked Steep Roads. Perfect!
This valley was famous for Tanyards
A pretty little Lewis County Park
A Tobacco Drying Shed with some Character
Tobacco growing in the fields, note the sticks on the wagon (left), the tobacco will be draped over the sticks and then hung in a tobacco shed to dry
Small Town Kentucky
View from Echo Valley Winery
Goddard White Bridge
What is "Ithiel Town Lattice" you ask?
Town's lattice bridge (from Wikipedia)
On January 28, 1820, Town was granted a patent for a wooden lattice bridge, which became known as the Town Bridge. The design was of great importance because it could be built quickly by relatively unskilled workers from readily available material. The design also avoided the need for the heavy piers needed for stone arches. The design was widely known throughout the world and made Town wealthy (Town is said to have charged one to two dollars per foot in royalties for his designs). Town's design can still be seen in two of Connecticut's remaining covered bridges, Bulls Bridge in Kent and West Cornwall Covered Bridge in Cornwall and Sharon, and in the Eagleville Bridge and the Sushage in Washington County, New York. Many other extant covered bridges also employ Town's basic design. The lattice is sometimes called a truss, although it lacks vertical members.
I hope you enjoyed the barn storming tour. We leave Carter Caves on the 25th bound for Blacksburg, Virginia. We will post up once we've gotten parked at our new location.
