West Virginia and Kentucky

After having a delightful breakfast with a dear friend, Lusine Shahnazaryan and her wonderful family, we left Charlottesville, Virginia, and headed westward toward the Appalachian Mountains. Rather than driving straight across, we drove about 50 miles south on the majestic Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping occcasionally to take pictures of the hazy blue mountains around us. (We understand why they are also called the Smoky mountains.)

We got lucky when we stopped at the Humpback Rocks Visitor Center about halfway into our ride. As we walked to the center, we could hear mountain music in the distance. Some call it blue grass, some call it mountain music. Whatever you call it, we heard some excellent music that day in the shade of some tall oaks near the center. The five-man band called Loose Gravel was playing that day as part of a free Sunday concert series. The instruments included a fiddle, a mandolin, a banjo, a guitar and a base, and the men who played them obviously loved the music they were playing. It was a gift to hear them and a joy to see their infectious smiles.

From that point on and all through West Virginia, we listened to the blue grass music channel on our Sirius radio. It just seemed appropriate as we wound our way around the lush hills and through the valleys. The slogan for West Virginia is "Wild and Wonderful," and according to our "1,000 Places..." book: "West Virgnia is the only state that is fully contained within the mighty Appalachian Mountain range, giving it the hilly winding topography that makes folks joke it would be bigger than Texas if it were pulled out flat." We believe it.

We continued to play the blue grass through most of Kentucky, but switched to country music along the way. That also seemed appropriate as we drove through the corn fields and horse country. We stopped just north of Lexington at the Kentucky Horse Park, home of the International Museum of the Horse and the American Saddlebred Museum. We took a horse-drawn tour of the grounds and got to see a few of the resident champion horses very comfortably housed in the Hall of Champions (shown here).

The most famous, and richest, of the champions we saw was Cigar, a Hall of Fame thoroughbred racehorse who in 1995 and 1996 became the first American racehorse racing against top-class competition to win 16 races in a row since the Triple Crown winner Citation did it in 1948 and 1950. He is also the all-time leading money earner among North American thoroughbreds, with almost $10 million in career earnings. (His story is a little sad because he was found afterward to be sterile and is not be able to breed any more champions.)

We arrived in Peoria, Ron's home town, to visit with his brother Lee and wife Liz for a few days. The weather is surprisingly comfortable. Our first night here, we sat out on the patio until bedtime, overseeing grandkids playing in the swimming pool, watching some baseball (they are St. Louis Cardinals fans) and just visiting. Life is good.