Road Trip....Day 3 KY to TN

*Road Trip 2015 Day 3....or Time spent with The Brothers x 2, History(Lincoln and Otherwise) and Obnoxious Waiters*

Day 3 arrived and saw us waking up in a Holiday Inn Express in Campbellsville, KY.
A brief breakfast down in the lobby and we were off on our way.

We saw friends and visited 2 distilleries on Day 2.
Oh, I forgot to show y'all our passports............

These are the little books for the Bourbon Trail.  There are 9 distilleries on regular Trail and 9 more distilleries on the "craft" Trail and each Trail has it's own passport book for you to get stamped after visiting each distillery.
We now have 1 stamp on each book......

And here is the map of the 9 major distilleries on the Bourbon Trail........

So we had one more planned stop to make before leaving Kentucky and no it was NOT another distillery!

We somehow found the Abbey of our Lady of Gethsemani(also called just Gethsemani) near Loretto and New Haven KY.

 

You can take a retreat here on certain days during the year.

This is the public building that houses a museum of sorts and the gift shop.

They have information about the order and the monks who live here as well as a very well done informative film which runs constantly.

This was as close as I got to meeting a monk......

The brothers pray the Liturgy of the Hours 7 times throughout the day. 

3:15 am Vigils
5:45 am Lauds
7:30 am Terce
12:15 pm Sext
2:15 pm None
5:30 pm Vespers
7:30 pm Compline

The backbone of these services is the 150 psalms, sun or recited according to a 2-week cycle, so they basically sing their prayers 7 times per day(only 6 times on Sunday).
Add in celebrating Mass at 6:15 am and the Rosary at 7:00 pm each day and their days are truly devoted to God and prayer.

They are a self-supporting order as well.  In between all their Spiritual work they make food items to sell to the public(as well as make income with their retreats).  They also make many of their own supplies such as clothing, shoes and furniture.

The Abbey has a large gift shop selling all kinds of products both religious and not.  There was a wide selection of food and handmade products made by other Trappist orders throughout the world for sale there as well. 

I wanted some FUDGE made at Gethsemani but since it was hot out and we weren't going home for 2 weeks I didn't think the fudge who make it home(both due to the heat in the car and my lack of willpower not eating it all within the next 24 hours lol).

So I made due with a fruitcake, some pepper jelly(a gift for someone for Xmas)and a magnetic postcard for the fridge.  Hubs bought a couple of books, which is his "go to" souvenir purchase.

We could have attended the Sext liturgy at 12:15pm with the brothers in the chapel since we arrived right at noon but we opted out as we couldn't take that much time.

It is a very serene(well, except for the bus load of local high school students who arrived right after we did)and peaceful place. 
Here is a shot from the car of the chapel buildings.  There is a nice old cemetery next to it that I was itching to go wander through and snap some pictures.
Alas Hubs wouldn't let me do that either.....

If you are interested in knowing more about the Abbey of Gethsemani go HERE.


We then drove west on 31 East out of New Haven, KY toward Hodgenville.
Along that road we passed Knob Creek Farm..........

This was the home of Lincoln's parents.  They moved here from Sinking Spring Farm a few miles away when Abe was 2.5 years old.  Sinking Spring Farm is the site of a big old National Parks site but this site at Knob Creek along with the buildings was only given to the Parks Service in 2001.

It's 10 miles from the birthplace site.  The cabin here is not actually the one Lincoln lived in.  It's a neighbor's cabin, the Gollahers.  It was preserved and moved here to where the Lincoln's cabin was sited on the land.  In 1933 the larger building, the Lincoln Tavern was constructed in the old log style.  It was built to capitalize on the booming tourist trade around the whole Lincoln mystique.  The tavern had been a dance hall that served liquor but when LaRue county went "dry" it was turned into a museum and gift shop.  This property was put onto the National Historic Register in 1988 and stayed in private hands until 2001.
Unfortunately it was closed due to construction at the site so we didn't stop and I just pulled this photo off of Google maps.  It was a big old muddy, dug-up mess in person that day.

Then we passed through the center of Hodgenville, KY, passing more Lincoln museum's that you could shake a stick at......get me outta here!

This is Kentucky's Official Lincoln Museum.  We didn't stop(gee, I wonder why?lol).  It had life size dioramas with wax figures, newspaper clippings, etc.

We kept driving up Rte. 61 into Elizabethtown, KY and found this little gem located in the old public library building......

The Hardin County History Museum.  Finally something NOT Lincoln-Centric!

Luckily it was Tuesday and wasn't 2pm yet.
And free? Why yes please!

Of course we enter through the back door from the parking lot and not the front entrance and one of the first rooms I go in has this........

 

That's the actual door of the Lincoln cabin(doesn't say which one, Sinking Spring or Knob Creek).......figures, right? lolz
Evidently we entered and I went directly into the Lincoln Wing of their collection.
I just can't catch a break today, can I?

Lots of Lincoln-esque tchotchkes in there, both authentic and not.
What is this obsession this country has with Lincoln anyway?  It's like the country began and ended with him!




As you can tell I am NOT a fan..........

Off my mini-rant and back to my narrative--

Big displays in this room of Lincoln's ancestors.
Here is the one for his mother's lineage.........

Well THAT'S interesting! They claim his maternal grandfather was a James Hanks who lived in
the Hatt(now called Hat)Creek area of Campbell County.  Hat Creek is now within the town of Brookneal, VA
This is where many of my mother's family/ancestors were from and my mother was actually born in Brookneal.  My "peeps" were in Hatt Crek in the late 1700's when James Hanks were there. 

There is still much debate over Lincoln's real maternal ancestors.  There are 3 schools of thought on this question and no one of them has been proved to be his actual ancestry.
I'll make a post in the future on the Lincoln maternal controversy.

Moving on outta the Lincoln room, the museum had a reproduction of a typical pioneer era cabin inside the building.  I must say these early Kentucky Americans' living quarters were cramped.

Watch out Hubs!  There's rabid raccoon about to jump on your back! lolz

I spied this montage hanging over another display and grinned.

It tells the tale of the GREAT DIAMON HOAX of 1872.
Philip Arnold, from Elizabethtown KY, along with his cousins John Slack perpetrated a scheme to defraud many prominent businessmen of their money by investing in a diamond mine by showing them bags of diamond and other gems they said came from their land claim in Wyoming.

By the time this scheme was exposed it had ensnared General George S. Dodge, Horace Greeley, Asbury Harpending, General George McClellan, William C. Ralston, Baron von Rothschild, and Charles Tiffany.
Gotta love a couple of scoundrels who pull one over on big, important fellows.....

There were lots of old artifacts of Kentucky life through the centuries as well in this museum.
I especially loved this display of champer pots from the 1800's.......

And despite the political correctness that runs rampant in America today, they had a Confederate battle flag flying high.....

Some old guns, maybe even a Kentucky long rifle(a line of my ancestors has a close connection to that particular type of gun).........

Lots of interesting books in their gift shop section.  Most of the "stuff" souvenirs were geared toward children but I swear I did pick up a pin but for the life of me I couldn't find it once we got home.
Oh well.

Even though this museum was free they did take freewill offerings, so we put some cash into their donations jar.

As it was almost 2pm when we finished in the museum we grabbed lunch before we left the area.
I had brought a Longhorn gift card with me and we saw one nearby so we had a proper sit-down steak lunch.  With the gift card we were out less than $20 including tip for 2 nice steak dinners. 8-)

We stopped at a Kroger grocery store across the street after lunch for some drinks for the cooler when my nose was assaulted by the smell of fried dough and cotton candy...........

This temporary carnival was just setting up for a stay and they must have been firing up the food concession equipment that afternoon.  Thank goodness we had just eaten or I'd have been over there with a fist full of money demanding to be served something nasty and unhealthy to eat! 8-)

We set out on the Western Kentucky Parkway......

And when we got to Central City, KY we got off to get gas.

Driving through town we spied signs for a monument........

For the Everly Brothers.
Actually Don Everly was born in the now-defunt community of Brownie which is located nearby.
Phil was born in Chicago.
But Central City lays claim to being the home of this musical pair.

Me taking a selfie with the bros.  It's the nearest thing to being with them that I can do since Phil died in 2014.

If you don't know who these guys are, check this out to jog your memory...



Back on the road west, we crossed over the Tennessee River....

And then we cruised down into Tennessee....

Once we hit Union City it was getting dark so we found a motel to stop for the night and went next door for dinner at this place, Sassafraz.

This was a "trying to be upscale" restaurant with disappointing food.

Our waiter was a young kid(teen)who either was a kitchen worker who was pressed into serving us or just very inexperienced.
As he hovered over us, we were debating out loud if Hubs should order a raw oysters appetizer when the waiter said quite loudly to us, "Ewww, that's disgusting!"
LOLZ
Hubs decided to just get a salad at that point as I tried to stop snorting and chortling.

I ordered a crab cake appetizer and a chopped salad for my dinner.
The crab cakes(IF there was any crab in them)was served on a bed of fried spinach.....well, more like a bed of greasy limp burnt spinach onto which they had tossed some leftover veggies and some disgusting unknown sauce I had to scrap off the "crab cake".

A restaurant in a dinky little town in western Tennessee trying to be something it can't. So not worth the $37.81 we spent that's for sure!
Being the classy couple we are Hubs and I went back to the room for a little peach moonshine nightcap before turning in for the night.

Next up is Day 4-TN to AR.

Sluggy