Pikeville Hillbilly Days Roadtrip 2024

Caution: this page is VERY image heavy. If anything fails to load, right click it and select "Load Image." Maybe I'll reformat the page some other time and make things load in galleries, but for now I just want this posted!

It seems like most of our trips start a particular way lately: Cav suggests some roadtrip to a location within a couple hours of our city, Jude and I forget to schedule it until the last minute, and we fly by the seats of our pants and have a phenomenal time anyway. This time, Cav (who is, as I've mentioned before, our dear goth, double Hatfield-McCoy descendent hailing from the easternmost reaches of Kentucky) had been craving a trip back to their origins, partially in order to put some old questions to rest and partially in keeping with a continued effort to reconnect and reappreciate their roots. This April, shortly after our trip to see the total solar eclipse, was Pikeville's yearly Hillbilly Days festival!

Hillbilly Days has been an annual fixture since the last 1970's, one that Cav billed to us as somewhat boring after one's first couple of hours there (spoilers, that assessment was outdated). It's technically a fundraiser for Shriner's Hospital in Lexington, but it rolls together elements of street fest, local-flavor celebration, and county fair seamlessly. Cav was quite excited to see it, despite their reservations, so we managed to get three days off work to spend in eastern Kentucky!

Our Hillbilly Days would prove special in another way. Cav invited another friend of ours, Catie, to fly out for the occasion. Catie is from (presumably) the nicer portions of Boston, so we were all excited to get her assessment of the mountain region.

In preparation, Cav wanted to book us a cabin at Jenny Wiley State Resort Park, a state park in the mountains near Prestonsburg, around 30 minutes northwest of Pikeville. A wedding party took up most of the available rooms, but we were able to get a single night in a secluded cabin up the slopes from the main lodge. The other night, they secured a mega-cheap AirB&B in Matewan, WV, just across the state border. Neither was very expensive, and both looked very cozy, so we were extremely eager for this trip!

We'll start at the top. Somehow, direct flights from Louisville to Boston (let alone Lexington to Boston) are scant, so poor Catie had to take a couple of connecting flights to get from the east coast to Kentucky. She finally landed at midnight on Wednesday, April 17; while Jude and I were heading home from his last shift of the week, she and Cav were in Louisville, having a midnight Waffle House dinner, which sounds like a perfect way to start a vacation in Kentucky.

The next day, after basically no sleep at all, Cav went to work while Catie stayed home in their "Giallo lighting" living room, getting caught up on commissions. Jude and I frantically cleaned house--I'd been working on finals and projects for the weeks leading up to this trip, and we were going to have a new cat visitor after the trip, so we (read:I) wanted the apartment to be plenty clean.

We'd initially invited everyone over at 6 PM or so, but Cav and Catie didn't show at the expected time. There's a bunch of traffic at day-end between Lexington and Frankfort, so I wondered if they got stuck in the flood, but as it got later and later, we got more and more worried. Come to find out...

Nice.

Finally, we got to the part of any friend meetup that people in our circle look forward to: the Chainhaus-house soup dinner! Jude is a soup wizard--he does this thing where he goes into a fugue state in front of our spice cabinet and then emerges from our kitchen with a perfectly-seasoned dish--and we had a tasty ham and rice soup left over from several days ago that we wanted to share with our guests. Cav and Catie brought over a whole wheat roll from Andy's (can't recommend this place enough if you visit the Kentucky state capitol!), and we sat down for a lovely soup dinner.

Now, something that's important to this story is that Jude and I have only had one house key for a couple of weeks. We had a friend of ours, Kat, come in to watch Pavel for the couple of days we were out of town for the eclipse, and since we were planning to be out again, we didn't bother to get our key back, since she'd be in to feed and water and love on him anyway. I must have told her slightly the wrong dates that we were going to be out...

Anyway, all four of us were sitting down at the table, about to dig into our soup, when our front door opened up and Kat called out to Pavel from the bottom floor! We all shouted back at her and strong-armed her into coming up for a bowl of soup.

Our unexpected party of five spent the night playing a tabletop guilty/not guilty game, in which a judge read out personal failings and tried to decide if anyone at the table had done them. We learned that I've pulled a fire alarm (during summer, at a school, and I didn't realize it was a felony because I was 12), that none of us had been suspended (Cav, the judge, was disappointed in everyone), and (add here). Later on, we went to grab ice cream at Jude's insistence and came back to our apartment to watch Wrong Turn (the 2003 original, not the 2021 reboot) on Cav's insistence. They wanted a hillbilly horror bit to kick off the trip. Unfortunately, the hillbillies in Wrong Turn don't look like... humans, at all, which detracts from the effect a lot, in my opinion. Kat went home, and Catie and Cav crashed on our spare couch at around midnight.

We thought we might have a nice homecooked breakfast the next day, right before we were due to leave for Pikeville, but we wound up getting a late start (Cav's two hours of sleep struck them hard), so instead we got some snacks at Kroger and headed out. The plan was for Cav and I to split driving again, and I took the wheel until we got to Salyersville at the end of the Burt Combs Mountain Parkway.

Pikeville, which is way in the eastern edge of the state, is behind ancient mountains and tree-filled valleys. Driving into the foothills and the peaks beyond is a humbling experience. When I drive through the place where I grew up, the empty space is mostly farmland--most of what you pass is land that's watched closely, combed over, monitored, even if nobody steps on it for months and months. It's strange to think that some of the mountains we passed in eastern Kentucky are unused by most humans most of the time.

At the same time, the drive itself is maddening. The road winds through peaks, but much of time time, it blows right through them. There are open gashes in mountainsides where roads are cut, to say nothing of the sliced-off tops of mountains, removed to expose the coal underneath. Earth-moving isn't uncommon in these parts by any means. In fact, Pikeville is home to the Pikeville Cut-Through, the second largest terraforming project in the Americas, after only the Panama Canal. (By the way, the Pikeville Cut-Through is a very interesting project in terms of engineering in a remote area; EKU has a small oral history collection about the project, if you'd like to check it out.)

Cav has strong feelings about mountaintopping and hillcutting, obviously. They liken it to tearing into a body. It's easy to see it that way, for sure. There are areas on the road where rocks frequently fall, and it's hard not to see it as an open wound, oozing blood, unable to knit itself closed. It's astounding to pass through as a person in a society, and at the same time it's shameful to see as a human. Hard to explain. Next time you pass through a cut-in mountain pass, take a look at the walls around you.

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I didn't spend too much time looking at the walls that were once the guts of mountains. We'd swapped drivers at a gas station, where I got a tasty (if weak) coffee, and Catie grabbed something she'd been meaning to try for a long time: a Four Loko.

Why did Catie, a passenger in a motor vehicle, choose to get a Four Loko? Why did Catie, who knew she was about to be at a street fair in an hour, get a Four Loko? I have no clue. She picked one based, apparently, on what she thought would be the best representative sample/silliest possible choice for the experience of drinking a Four Loko at 3 PM on a Thursday in rural Kentucky. "America Flavored," the can said, with no further explanation. It was horrible. Artificial cherry mixed with motor oil. But Cav noticed she had an open container in the car about 15 minutes later, and pressed her to finish it quickly so they wouldn't be arrested if we were pulled over.

Catie was struggling with the Four Loko--not only does it taste like ass, it's heavily caffienated, and very alcoholic. I decided to help her for about a third of the can, despite being a ligthweight and also hating the fake cherry/jet fuel flavor profile. We complained and yelled, but between the two of us, we crushed the 24 ounce can. And then Catie crushed it on her forehead. By the time stopped at a Walmart somewhere in Pikeville, some 15 minutes out from Hillbilly Days (it takes quite a while to get through eastern Kentucky towns, given that they're built like snakes through the floodplains--all long, no wide), we were both pretty drunk.

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After we left Walmart, four packs of Pokemon cards and some fair cash the richer, we approached Hillbilly Days, which was in full swing. Cav searched for parking for quite some time. We passed several Parking $10 signs, and many more No Parking signs; beside us, a string of cars lined the mountainside road for nearly a mile. I made a good case for parking at the local health department (it was almost 5 PM) before we found our mana in the desert:

The sign read Parking $5.

We pulled in, triumphant. Cav paid up with the community group who was managing the lot, and we hiked out to the fair. There were more people than I expected!

After checking out the booths, we approached the midway. For a few minutes we sat down on a curb by the local multi-purpose government building, drinking a free water given out by a nearby church group, and we watched as a prisoner transport sedan from nearby Floyd county got lost in the adjacent parking lot. Eventually the driver got out to beg a sherrif for directions for anywhere that wasn't a street fair. We considering springing his passenger loose, but decided against it on not-getting-arrested-ourselves grounds.

Still drunk (er, half of us, as least), we all hopped on the ferris wheel, Jude and Cav on one side and Catie and I on the other. We got to see most of the fair from the top, and the city beyond. It was beautiful and clear at that point in the day, and we all got some cute pictures together. (By the way, Cav says it looks like Jude was proposing in this first photo, where he looks so intense. He's actually saying "cheeseburger." Inside joke.)

This was my first time having a beard in public (it grew in within about 4 days!) and I'm still a little anxious looking at pictures of myself here.

Love to have some guy's RV in your selfie.

When you're drunk at a fair...

We could see so much from the top of the ferris wheel's circuit... wish we'd gotten better pics of the rest of town and not just this church.

After we got down from the ferris wheel, there were just enough credits on our ride cards for one more excursion. The group chose a ride called the Round Up, which is an open-air version of an old fave of mine, the Gravitron. Unfortunately, I was still a little sloshed, and didn't want to risk vomiting all over the poor hicks on the Round Up. We didn't quite have enough credits for everyone to go, anyway, so I submitted the last of Jude and my card for Catie's fare, then held everyone's huge-ass water bottles while they got spun around real fast-like. (Side note, check out the link on the Round Up. I love people who are really into amusement rides.)

After that last ride, we all headed back up the hill to search for food. Jude and I stopped to look at a vendor booth (vendor not included, it seemed), and by the time we hiked up to the multi-purpose government building and the free-water-bottle church booth, Catie and Cav had secured some tasty fried green tomatoes. Jude and I found some tornado potatoes (tasty, but not enough by far), and at some point a tasty steak tips meal appeared (very good, but accompanied by a much-advertised scoop of baby bella mushrooms, which apparently tasted like gym socks).

Who took all these Catie pics, anyway?

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Meanwhile, Cav was on a mission. Their cousin Aaron was somewhere in the crowd, and they intended to find him. We were instructed to look for a tall, bearded man with three blond children... well, that was solidly half of the crowd. In an effort to find him, we made our way back to the midway after not too long.

I don't recall how it happened, but when we got to the midway again, Cav and I decided we wanted to ride a thrill ride, or as close as we could get to one. Near the far end of the midway was a Zipper, which they made a beeline for after considering one other ride for a minute or two. As we waited in line, we began to see miners, faces coal-black, arriving with their families. Even with their backs turned, we could recognize them by the high-viz striping on their pants. Not too long after, it began to rain significantly. Cav and I refused to get out of line, but Jude and Catie scurried off to seek shelter.

Finally, almost 30 minutes later, we got up to the Zipper. The attendant locked us into our grody, rain-wet padded cage, and we were off. I think I knocked my head on something hard despite all the padding, and I was very glad that I wasn't drunk anymore by then.

When we got down, we found that Jude and Catie had gone to get a funnel cake, and that Catie had gambled her cash away at a coin pusher. Jude had found a huge smoothie served in a green plastic palm tree glass. Reunited, we all headed up the hill, perused a few more stalls looking for quilts or other interesting geegaws, and eventually moved to the parking garage of the Gearheart Fiber building, where we found all the good crafts!

Down here, we found a lovely ceramicist. Catie got a bowl for her cat, Perilla Pickle, who was having her first vacation away from her human, and I grabbed a cute speckled mug for Kat. We stopped by a hot sauce maker, a fudge maker (who'd traveled all the way from Paducah!), and a crocheter before we called it quits. The money we'd taken out at Walmart was burned up pretty fast!

Our final excursion was into downtown Pikeville, near the Appalachian Wireless center. In the absence of Cav's cousin, we started looking for their uncle instead. We happened past a lovely, friendly bassett hound named Richard, and eventually met up with uncle Keith, who was the rightful inheritor of the family parcel (we'll get into that below). Keith and Cav talked about their family for a few minutes before he had to head back to work, and we began the trek back to the car.

I love that we found this photo op.

Right before leaving the fair, we stopped at a stand to get a Polish sausage. A goth couple was in line with us, and we laughed with them while they tried to figure out how to carry all their food on top of their baby stroller. By now it was night, and we hauled our finds back towards the University of Pikeville and Pikeville Medical Center, where we thought we'd parked.

Jude has told me several times that he insisted we parked to the right of where we eventually parted ways, Catie and Cav to seek the car and Jude and I to eat a Polish sausage and rest a plantar fasciitis flare, respectively. Personally, I don't remember it all too well, but I trust his memory infinitely more. Naturally, Catie and Cav went left instead. Jude and I sat on a darkened curb near one of the student houses, around the back of UPike's basketball gym, and chatted for a good 30 minutes, wondering where our friends were.

Eventually, our friends approached from behind us, car not in tow. We hopped up and tried the right route. Within abut 100 feet, we passed a house we recognized. We were at the car shortly after. If my mapping skills are correct, Jude and I had been resting 0.3 miles from the car, maximum.

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It was around 9 PM by the time we left Hillbilly Days, but there was one more task to do. Cav had made arrangements with the elusive cousin, Aaron, to meet at the closest thing they have to a family home. We hopped on the 119--a highway Cav has strong opinions about, given that it was constructed over their ancestral home--and drove northeast.

Catie was excited to pass through Zebulon, KY, a name she was interested in as peak Kentucky. We passed Meta, Sidney, Canada, Stone, and Belfry, with its REBEL Convenience Store (perhaps the worst branding for a gas station I've ever seen. Thanks, I hate it!).

We looked high and low for the turn we were meant to take. Twice, we passed through a road cut close to the walls of the mountain it was dug through. The peaks around us and the trees were the same color as the night sky, but I could feel them looming above. Cav commented on our last trip that the wide open spaces of my home region made them feel anxious. I could see how. The Appalachian mountains felt in the daytime like a hug; at night, they felt watchful, like a massive live thing peering over your shoulder. It's hard to explain, but the sensation made me understand why people talk about the mountains like a living woman. In my childhood home, exiting town and heading into the countryside felt like playing tag as a kid, breaking away from a classmate holding you and running free, arms wide into the yard, putting space between you and everyone else. Here, the countryside was closer than the city, and it reached for you even if you couldn't see its hands.

There was a gray two-story house at the head of the road that took us back to Cav's family home. After well over an hour, we found it and began to climb the narrow mountain road to meet Aaron. His truck was parked next door to the home at the end of the road, and we exited to see the home and two-story shed that Cav had been looking for.

I won't get into the details of the home--Cav deserves to remember it as it had been--but the family member that had cheated Keith out of what should have become his had taken pretty poor care of things. We looked around for a short time and then locked up, opting not to take some family video tapes with us. Cav and Aaron stood around in the yard chatting while Catie and I got spooked about a bullfrog in the distance. One or two cars passed on the road over the course of 15 minutes. We found that Aaron, a welder by trade, drove daily to Winchester for work, over two hours' drive one way on the Mountain Parkway. He loved the mountains, he explained, but he'd probably need to move to central Kentucky. There wasn't much for anyone in Pike county, anyway. Somber, we departed to make our way to our AirB&B.

We finally rolled into Matewan at around 11:30 PM--not usually a late hour for Jude and me, but we'd been up all day and walking for much of it. Cav had already mentioned they were given a set of specific instructions for getting to our AirB&B: ignore the listed address, enter a different one on the same road, and look out for a church and a post office. It turned out not to be too very hard to find (though not helped at all by the lack of ambient lights in the mountains), and we staggered into our rented room, duffel bags in tow.

The room was very clean, decorated, but a little Spartan in its size and simplicity. We didn't really care at the time (and don't care now, either--it was a nice little room!). Jude pulled a stool over to one of the two beds to set up his CPAP, and I explored the bathroom, finding that the room itself was up a step from the room, and the commode was on its own platform besides. Meanwhile, Cav and Catie noticed a couple of friendly dogs at the door, who left after a couple of minutes.

It was a nice room, and a nice bed, but the intermittent sound of ATVs on the nearby Devil Anse Trail System (or perhaps, trucks on the nearby highway) kept waking me up. When my alarm went off at 9 AM, I bit the bullet and got out of bed, showered, and made a pot of coffee.

There was a tiny gazebo off to the side of the hotel, and while everyone else was working on getting out of bed and getting dressed, I took my coffee and went outside, intending to look at the mountains and trees. When I got outside, though, I found this guy:

It was, indeed, a fucking goat. A large-ish horned black goat, kneeling on its front legs, calmly eating grass and clover in the yard of the house directly behind our rental. I spent a sleepy second processing this fact before I incorporated the yard goat into my morning plans.

After a short time, Cav arrived outside at the fence, another coffee in hand. We agreed that it was, yes, a fucking goat, who was now rising to move around its yard. We noticed now that the Yard Goat was quite old and arthritic, bent at the knee in a half-kneel even while standing, and he hobbled over to us to say hello.

Yard Goat was grey around the muzzle, with striking, milky-white eyes and soft black angora wool. He accepted nose and head pets with a serene look, and bumped his side against the fence to beg for even more scritches. After getting his fill, he moved off to seek shade under the trampoline in the yard, the picture of goat contentment.

By now, we had another visitor. One of the two dog visitors from last night had arrived, this one a big Retriever mix with golden eyes and fur. He begged for pets, too, and solemnly jumped up on me while Cav and I sat on a metal bench in the gazebo. They said that he probably had a "stupid" name, like Rover or Bruno. One of us suggested Bongo. The other suggested Chalupa. We settled on Bongo Chalupa. By the time Catie joined us with another coffee, Bongo Chalupa was napping on Cav's foot, pleased as punch.

As the morning warmed, ATVs passed intermittently on the road, heading to one trail or another. At some point a fleet of a dozen passed, though instead of intricate forest camo, most of these riders wore dusty blue-and-hi-vis uniforms. Cav pointed out that they were heading into the mines instead of the trails. Perhaps they seemed a little more somber than the tourists in the last group. Maybe I was imagining it.

Eventually, we finished off the pot of coffee, met back up with Jude inside the room, and packed our things out by 11 AM checkout. Bongo Chalupa had crossed the highway to see a man on a porch near the post office--possibly his owner--and we pulled out to return to Kentucky.

Jude did get to meet the dog before we left. Don't worry, everyone.

Does... does he really?

The mountainside right outside of our AirB&B. Actually, we stayed in Red Jacket, not Matewan, I think. Red Jacket is such a cool name.

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We didn't have a chance to see the night before, but Matewan is quite historic, and much of its history is lovingly preserved downtown. As we drove back over the border, we passed a historic landmark sign for the Matewan Massacre, a battle between union busters and mineworkers in the West Virginia coal wars, which eventually led to the Battle of Blair Mountain.

More strikingly, there was a huge, engraved floodwall around the downtown portion of Matewan. According to documentation from one of the West Virginian McCoy descendents, Matewan had flooded 36 times between 1949 and 1974 alone--four of those floods happened in a month-long period in 1953, and the time that passed between catastrophic occurences got shorter and shorter as time went on. "In 1974, a United States Army Corps of Engineer planner described Matewan as having the most severe flooding problem in America," Robert McCoy explains. McCoy was the town's mayor in 1977, during the worst flood of the era--he recounts watching a dog, sitting atop the doghouse it was chained to, floating down the road, and sheltering in the top storey of his mother's home, listening to gas tanks and cars bump into the building as other homes crumpled around them until they were rescued by boat.

McCoy says that, in the 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers considered damming Tug Fork to mitigate flooding, but ultimately decided against it. The 1977 flood renewed national interest in anti-flood measures, and the floodwall was approved for construction by 1982.

Completed in 1997, the floodwall is over 2,300 feet long, stands between 6 and 29 feet tall at varying segments, and includes seven gates, a pedestrian door, the highway gate (which we passed through), and a bridge over New Mate Creek. The river-facing portion has a pedestrian walkway that leads to a couple of fishing piers over Tug Fork.

Personally, I was more struck by the etchings on the wall than the stature of the wall itself. Engravings on both sides of the wall show the town's history; at one portion, the name "MATEWAN" reads in large letters, and elsewhere, renditions of the Hatfields and McCoys stand side by side, separated by the river. Check out some of the photos I've found across the web:

From West Virginia Tourism. The effect of those vertical lines is quite striking from the road!

This one is from the Wikimedia Commons. It would have been so easy to make this depiction of the Hatfields and McCoys cheesy, but I really love the way this is done. Very folk art, very timeless.

This was shot by a Jimmy Emerson who posted his photos of Matewan on Flickr back in 2006. He posted the below photo, as well.

This is what one of the road gates looked like. I didn't realize they could close when we first passed through them!

This is the gate we passed through, courtesy of the Howder family on Flickr, though seen from the opposite side. As this was shot in 2016, the West Virginia governor's name is outdated here. The Howder family posted the next couple shots, as well!

This is the pedestrian gate, which we didn't get to see on our brief drive through town.

Finally, here's a shot of some of the wall's detail. I love that the wall is a seme-chronologic recount of the area's history (post-European settlement, obviously...).

This comes from Matewan.com, and was one of the illustrations accompanying Mayor McCoy's recollection of the 1977 flood. I won't repost any more here--please just go read his account!

This also comes from the Matewan history site. These wide shots of the wall are kind of hard to come by! Go check out that link for some of the technical details about the wall's construction.

Much of my research on Matewan draws from Matewan.com, an older site created by a resident of the area. Shameless plug: go take a look at it! Mr. Blankenship and friends documented their hometown lovingly. I'm endlessly glad that his accounts are still on the web.

As you might have noticed, I also linked to the Historical Marker Database, which is where I went to find information about the Matewan Massacre sign I noticed while we left town. I used this site on our previous trip when we stopped at Halfway Tavern in Iuka for the eclipse, and those two episodes sparked a little interest in historical markers for me... stay turned for what results of that.

After we left Matewan, we went straight to our next lodging... in a way. Remember how Cav had wanted us to stay both nights at Jenny Wiley State Resort Park? Well, with much belly-aching about Prestonsburg and how it sucks, we were on our way to, evidently, the worst major town in eastern Kentucky and its very pretty state park.

Having left Matewan around 10, we arrived midmorning at the state park, and most of us checked out the little gift shop while Cav asked about checking in. Jude and I grabbed a few postcards for our families and our postcard collection.

Turns out we were somewhat too early for checkin. The clerks told us that they'd be happy to check us into our cabin early if the housekeeper could be reached to assure it was ready, but they were obviously busy. We'd have to wait, which was totally fine, because we'd heard that Jenny Wiley had a really nice cafe!

While I was in the bathroom, everyone decided to take a seat outside. Honestly, the huge-windowed indoor seating area was lovely in a park-lodge kind of way, but outdoors couldn't be beat, even though it was slightly cold. We were on a walkway overlooking the Big Sandy river, and we opted for a pot of coffee despite the coffee back in West Virginia. Down the steep riverbank, motorboats passed intermittently, some with rangers and others with guests. The special was a blackened catfish, which Catie and Cav both ordered. Jude had a hot brown, considered a uniquely Kentucky food by many (even though it hails from Louisville, on the opposite side of the state), and I ordered the vegetarian country staples plate, which came with soup beans, corncakes, and fried potatoes. See below for photos--every dish was delicious!

Jude's hot brown. The toppings are sliced turkey, bacon, a fresh tomato slice, and Mornay sauce, though the Jenny Wiley chef chose to add a bit of yellow cheese, it seems. It was very tasty.

My lunch: soup beans, corn cakes, and crispy fried potato!

Cav and Catie's catfish filets came on rice pilafs, with a side of fries for Catie and a baked potato for Cav.

The Big Sandy, right below our lunch spot!

Open these in a new tab to see more detail.

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After brunch, we headed back inside to check on our cabin. The clerk, a beautiful, curly-haired young man named Zach, got us checked in, and we headed up a steep slope towards our private cabin in the woods. It was down a long staircase, and came with a wraparound porch, open sunroom, a couple of basic camp grills. Once we got inside, we saw a smallish kitchen, a little living room with the world's most stain-resistant couch and armchair set and a cable TV. The cabin was advertised as sleeping eight, though I found out while waiting on the bathroom that it shits one (which is where the title for this section comes from).

The view of our secluded cabin from the road!

And the view of the road from the cabin. My calves hurt...

Get you a wraparound porch and a Cav.

Not super sure when this happened anymore, but at some point Cav and I sat down in the sunroom with some lapsang souchong and watched Antiques Roadshow on KET. Heaven.

Down the hall were a couple of bedrooms with two big, fluffy beds each. We realized that the room Jude and I claimed had a rustic armchair shoved pointedly in one corner facing a bed, though Catie and Cav's room didn't. We're not sure why we were selected for the artisinal, gin-u-wine eastern Kentucky cuck chair. Anyway, we thought it would make a really good shirt. Kentucky Parks Department, get on it. Until then, my version is here, if you'd like to misuse CustomInk.com.

Jude and Cav wanted to take a nap after our big meal, so Catie and I hung out for a while in the living room. I called up to the front desk to ask about wifi. Beautiful Zach picked up, and he apologized profusely as he told me that the wifi would be out in our cabin for the duration of our stay. Not a problem, Beautiful Zach.

Jude got up from the nap not long after and we decided to run into Prestonsburg for groceries, as we planned to have a cookout that night. The Food City in town was bizarrely nice--not that we didn't expect it to be a nice store, but it was... honestly kind of beautiful for a grocery store? Which wasn't what we were expecting. We grabbed a bag salad, some strawberries, a block of tofu, steak cubes, and assorted grillable veggies, plus grill supplies and drinks. Jude had brought a big bottle of homemade barbeque sauce from home for this occasion.When we got back to the cabin, we loaded the meat into plastic bags to marinate in the fridge for the next few hours.

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On the way back into the park, Catie and I had spotted a trailhead, which we assumed skimmed the backside of the cabins that climbed the slope. It was labeled as a 1.3 mile loop, which we thought sounded like a nice nature walk, so we filled up my 1.2 liter water jug and headed out for the hike while Jude and Cav relaxed some more.

Catie and I skirted a party of parents, aunts, and uncles taking photos of a high school grad at the trailhead and headed into the woods. We chatted about her new job at a certain seafood company in Boston, then about her experiences living in Japan, and mine student teaching in South Africa (I'll write about it sometime, promise). That was about as much chit-chat as we got, though. Quickly it became apparent that the trail was not only longer than 1.3 miles, but was also heading up the slope, not across it. We switched back and forth up the incline, stopping to drink and rest breathlessly here and there. At some point I remember her talking about visiting Okinawa and seeing how the culture there was different. It was a little lucid moment of awareness in a sweaty, headachey trek.

Finally, we reached the crest of the mountain. I wish I could say we could see anything from here, but the trees were too thick with leaves for anything to be apparent. All we could see was the sky beyond the leaves, rather than even more green, and I had the sensation of being atop somthing. We finished off the water in triumph and followed a steep declining ramp back to the trailhead.

According to Jenny Wiley's website, this exposed rock from near the vertical peak of the trail is 200-300 million years old!

A rare flat surface...

Accidentally got my second mountain in on this trip! Oops.

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By the time we returned to the cabin nearly an hour later, it was time to start grilling dinner. Cav had a vivid mental picture of Jude and I as the grill dads, but Catie was the only one who'd really grilled before, so she was the star of the show. We made kebabs galore, as well as some barbeque tofu slabs, cabbage steaks, a strawberry salad, and the rest of the cider we had grabbed at the store. It turned out pretty good for a windy evening on a little camp grill!

I wish we'd had time to rent a boat, or go on some other trails, or perhaps take another stab at the grilling. But by the time we got done with dinner, it was time for bed, so we settled into the ultra-soft cabin beds and drifted off. With a couple of work shifts and a flight home slated for the next day, we needed to be up early.

We were all up at 8 AM, showering and cleaning up in shifts in order to make it out by 10. At the lodge, we stopped to check out and turn in our keys. I felt bad for not going in to seee Beautiful Zach one more time, or to grab a shirt, but there's always next time. We stopped at a Wendy's in Salyersville for a weirdly good breakfast burrito and a frankly disappointing coffee. Cav asked me to take the wheel all the way home, as they were exhausted mentally, and having nothing better to do in the car, I obliged.

Elk have been reintroduced to this region!

The ride back was relatively uneventful. The four of us listened to a podcast and played Those are My Cows incessantly. The mountains flattened into hills, which flattened into the rolling pastures and double fencerows of the bluegrass region. With little fanfare, Jude and I exited in our apartment complex and left Cav and Catie to continue to Muhammad Ali International in Louisville.

Entering Boston over the harbor. Obviously, this photo comes from Catie.

And that was the trip! I don't know if I can recommend Hillbilly Days if you're not nostalgic for it, unless it's a relatively short trip for you, but I heartily recommend visiting eastern Kentucky and West Virginia anyway.

Thanks for reading!