What a great start to our Kentucky Spring Break! This trip was initially planned for 2020, but well, yeah Covid 🤦🏻‍♀️… so we postponed for a year and here we are. We’ve got a whole bag full of clean masks and we’re ready to get back on that Holiday Rooooaaaaadddd 🎶

We pulled out dangerously close to our target time, and off we went… all the way across North Carolina, had some car sandwiches from Mom’s Restaurant for lunch…

clipped the northwestern corner of Tennessee and into Corbin, Kentucky!

We love the History Channel show “The Food that Built America, so no visit to Corbin, Kentucky would be complete without a visit to the Sanders’ Cafe – which is the very first Kentucky Fried Chicken!

“Yeah, another plaque.” (Insert sarcasm here)

They are still remodeling the interior museum and restaurant so we just enjoyed seeing the exterior. It was still really cool to see, despite almost getting crushed by 3 cars in the parking lot. Kentuckians are serious about these chicken!

We left the metropolis of Corbin and headed to Cumberland Falls State Park. We decided to stay in the park to cut down on the drive back and forth into Corbin. The DuPont Lodge is a beautiful lodge… it reminds me of a small version of Ketterman’s from Dirty Dancing.

From the Lodge, there are several trails one of which leads to Cumberland Falls, the Niagara Falls of the South. 65 feet high and over 100 feet wide, and with all the rain we’ve had, the river was really high which made the falls very full.

The Falls are the only place in the Western Hemisphere where you can see a Moonbow – a rainbow of white created during a full moon. And look! Another plaque!

And there were lots of rocks for climbing…

Even Mike got in on the climbing, which the boys loved!

The hike was beautiful and after 6 hours of driving we all enjoyed walking a few miles… although I would not say the stone stairs were up to code 🤣

The boys couldn’t understand why they had the lower observation areas blocked off (um because parts of them were underwater?) but they had still had a blast

Dinner at the Riverview Restaurant inside the Lodge was delicious! We were all “way too full” for individual desserts so we said we would just share one Derby Pie. Derby Pie is a Kentucky specialty of chocolate pie with walnut crust served with vanilla ice cream. And it is fantastic! Which led to a battle of the spoons 🤣🤣🤣

After dinner, we explored the Lodge. The lodge and trails were built in part by the Civilian Conservation Corp (part of the New Deal that put folks back to work during the Great Depression). Thanks to Coach Sizemore’s History lessons, the boys knew all about this and enjoyed sharing with us.

We are now snuggled in and relaxing for the night. It’s 23 degrees outside so we are thankful we are in the Lodge and not a campsite 🥶

Tomorrow we are off to visit a battlefield and the Corvette Museum! Perfect boy-day!