Roadside Attractions

My first drive on Kentucky roads is a study in contrasts. Stay on Hwy 231, and I’m on a two-lane country road, with homes, parishes, farms, gas stations, and drive-bys through towns no bigger than three buildings and a church. The occasional stoplight and left turn. A local coffee shop. Corn and soy fields and private gardens. No shoulder for potential breakdowns, nowhere to pull off unless I could tuck 40 feet worth of rig into the widening of the road that marks the next mailbox for rural delivery.

Such pastoral beauty is a most relaxing way to drive—for passengers. As a solo traveler with 27 feet in tow, I don’t soak in much of the scenery. I need to watch the road for the next bend, avoid drifting into a ditch or oncoming farm truck, and make sure I don’t miss a turnoff as back roads intersect and careen in unexpected directions.

More than an hour on this road, and I’m ready to ditch the romance of traveling the “blue highway” (black on today’s maps) for the promise of the thick red line that marks the William H. Natcher Parkway (which is natcher-ly shortened to Natcher Pkwy by the locals).

Less than an interstate, more than a highway, Natcher Parkway is a four-lane divided road that roughly parallels 231. Two fast-moving lanes each way, a wide grass strip between, as straight as a sober crow flies. It has no number, only a name, and it’s such a long one that highway signs leading to it show only a pinched little logo—nearly indecipherable at highway speeds.

The paving is new, the shoulders are wide, and much of the stretch is tree-lined to hide the rural life beyond and keep highway noise down for the locals. Not much need for that sound-screening now, as there are only five cars at a time this late Thursday morning...and that’s counting in both directions.

Around mile 40 on the parkway, one of those orange, diamond-shaped temporary construction signs flaps in the wind at the side of the road: “K-9 Unit in Use.” Oooh, police dogs! Where, where?

Half a mile later: “All vehicles subject to search.” Oh, this could be fun.

Another half a mile: “Drug check 2 miles ahead.” Even better. I wonder how they’ll deal with a fifth wheel and a socially fraidy feline, or if I look innocent enough to just flag on through.

I travel five more miles, all the while expecting the requisite slowdown and road block, uniformed officers, rubber cones, and sniffing dogs, but no drug checkpoint materializes. I’m so disappointed!

Corn and soy fields are still prominent in Kentucky, but they aren’t as endless and rolling here. Instead they’re interrupted by woods, or share borders with tree-lined creeks and upright cliffs of gray rock. The stone is particularly structured here: near-perfect verticals, with shallow troughs marking drill holes where rock was perforated then blasted away through any hill that was in the way of a straight-line path. Rugged, regular, and very solid looking, they remind me of the basalt walls of the Dalles along the Columbia River in Oregon.

My destination is Cave City, and my RV park for the next few days, Cave Country Campground, is flanked north and south by corn fields five feet tall, with cobs still fattening and climbing on the stalk.

Cave City is not content to be just the nexus of visits to the renowned Mammoth Caves National Park. To ensure its reputation as the “Gateway to Unforgettable Adventure!” Cave City offers up a frenzy of attractions for all ages. This place is serious.

A life-size T-rex painted with black and orange tiger stripes (!?) beckons at the I-70 exit to the town. It’s for—what else?—Dinosaur World, with over 100 life-size dinosaurs posed to graze and stomp through trees. I can just make out the neck-flare of a triceratops behind the high walls every time I drive by.

Signboards line the roads to announce go-carts, riding stables, bumper boats, Hillbilly Hound Fun Park, gem mining, cave tours, Big Mike’s Mystery House, waterslides (all closed), Guntown Mountain Theme Park (“Wild West Adventure—Relive the Past!!”). Even a Kentucky Down Under (“spend the whole day in our piece of Australia!”), which one traveler I meet says is actually pretty good. Billboards entice visitors to roadside gift shops where they can buy “rocks, gem fossils, and gifts.”


Some parks are faded and frayed, some are boarded up, and most look like they simply fold up and go home after summer. I haven’t seen this much intensity about “fun and adventure” in a nature-centric area since the redwood forests of California. (And this is just in the 10-mile radius of Cave City. I haven’t even got to the region’s more erudite options, like the Corvette Museum, the Shaker Museum, the Railpark Museum, the…)

Whatever you do when you come to Cave City, bring along some kids or someone as wacky as yourself (where’s Janis when I need her!).

The town of Cave City itself, around the bend on I-70 where it crosses some seriously strut-testing railroad tracks, is a sad little place with an antique “district” comprising four shops on one block, and a satellite shop three turns away. I’m on the hunt for a particular kitchen tool from the ’40s and ’50s, so I take the last hour of the day to skip into each place that’s still open.

The biggest is a block-size mall run by a woman named Magaline, old enough to be an antique herself. She’s tall and wears a broad, deep-purple straw hat with a deep purple ribbon, purple-pink lipstick, a skirt and blouse outfit of bright purple flowers, purple jeweled bracelets and necklaces, and thick mascara. She has a startlingly husky man-voice, and calls me “darlin’” every other sentence. I comment on how lovely she looks so color coordinated, and as she leads me through her crowded aisles to search for the item I want, I stifle a giggle: no longer behind the counter, the nethermost point of her put-together outfit is revealed—a pair of hot pink, foam Crocs that look like cotton candy clogs. The effect is the equivalent of wearing fuzzy slippers with an evening gown.

Another shop, Nuttin’ Fancy, is a mishmash of “Glassware, Collectibles, Primitives, Scrubs” (scrubs?), plus an “Indian Artifacts Museum.” How’s that for a combo? The clapboard store is behind her clapboard house, with a wild-grown garden between. So many antiques, broken bits, and garden art spill around the place that it’s hard to tell where the house ends and the dusty, musty, crammed-shelf, junk-hanging-from-hooks, garage-of-an-antique-store begins.

Another small shop, much less of a jumble with tidy shelving units and ample walking room, is run by a man whose gargantuan girth makes him look much shorter than he probably is. He wears a red polo shirt and khaki slacks and talks to a fellow who seems more of a local than a customer. His shop specializes in “Early American Pattern Glass, Depression Glass, Quilts, Furniture, Primitives, Southern Folk Art Face Jugs, Griswold Cast Iron—We Also Carry Jams, Jellies, Country Hams.” The place smells like fresh air, unusual for an antique store. I comment on it, and he looks at me as if I’m weirder than a feathers on a pig.

The fourth shop I visit is a bank turned antique store. It shares a wall with another half of the shop—the owners cut through 26 inches of brick to open a doorway between the buildings. I’m delighted by the original teller counters, stained glass, and woodwork the owners preserved in the bank side, but they are covered with so many “Antiques from A to Z” that it’s impossible to really appreciate their beauty. This place is sparkling clean, not surprising for a place that caters to customers who also come here to buy jewelry for “prom, wedding, special occasions.”

Alas, my search through all these stores scares up nary a hint of the tool I’m looking for, and I go back to the RV park disappointed. I pore over the dozens of attraction brochures and coupons that await me there, and decide to focus my attention on the one thing that’s of most interest to me right now: caves.