Kentucky Road Trip Stops

As we left Cave City, Kentucky, and the land of Mammoth Cave National Park, we have a 67-mile trip planned in the motor home to our next campground. That should take around an hour because we'll be on a four-lane road almost the entire time. But today, we are making that quick and easy drive into a Kentucky road trip. We soon pulled off the interstate and into a residential area in Munfordville for some curious pictures with rocks.

Denisa had read about a guy whose hobby was making rock gardens--with huge proportions. He decided to build a replica of England's Stonehenge in his back yard.

He had access to some of the big Kentucky stones, and he started bringing them home and setting them in the ground like the ancient peoples of Europe did.

The center stone has directional markings, and he attempted to align his stones with the sun just like at the ancient Stonehenge. He calls his yard art "Kentucky Stonehenge" and he invites visitors to come enjoy it. We parked the motor home on Main Street, and walked a couple blocks into this residential area to have a look.

We were glad to see that another side yard was also decorated with stone, but this one had a cross as its center piece and was titled "Garden of Gethsemane."

This road trip shouldn't be much further in miles, but it will certainly take us off those easy-to-drive four lane roads. In fact, we found ourselves on side roads that weren't even wide enough to paint the outside white lines.

That's because our next stop is at the home of this young family that homesteaded here in central Kentucky. The statue is of the Lincoln family, and the baby in the Mother's arms is young Abraham.

In the visitor center we found this interesting likeness of President Lincoln

It was made entirely of Lincoln-head pennies, worn or shiny to make different colors to shade the image.

While most people associate the state of Illinois with President Lincoln, he didn't actually move to that state until the age of 21. He was born here among the tall trees of Kentucky on a farm called Sinking Spring. The people of Kentucky decided to build a memorial to his birth place here. It is situated on a rolling hill, with 56 steps to represent the 56 years he lived.

The corner stone of this memorial was laid in 1906, and President Taft was here for its grand opening. What would you guess would be inside that memorial?

Inside that impressive columned building is a replica of the log cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. It was a symbol to all people that even coming from humble beginnings, one can still grow into the most powerful position in America.

While the Lincoln family would have loved to live out their years at the Sinking Springs farm, there was a disagreement in the ownership of the land. This often happened in the early years of Kentucky, and the Lincolns lost the court battle on the land they had paid for. So they moved down the road ten miles and leased Knob Creek Farm. We moved the motor home down that narrow road the same number of miles. This is the boyhood home of Abraham Lincoln, where most of his childhood memories were made. It was in this field that young Abe helped his father grow corn and pumpkins.

One of Abraham Lincoln's boyhood memories would be of the day that he almost drowned in the creek that runs through this property. He was saved by a boyhood friend, Austin Gollaher, who reached out with a stick to pull him out of the water. Logs from the old Gollaher home were used to build a log cabin replica on this property.

People have been stopping along this narrow road for many years to see Abe Lincoln's boyhood home. In 1933 a tavern was built to give those travelers a place to "rest." The old Lincoln Tavern is now the visitor's center at this national historic site.

With our three road trip stops, we didn't pull into our next campground until the middle of the afternoon. We stretched a one-hour drive into a five-hour road trip. But one of those hours was due to the time change on our drive. We have officially crossed into the Eastern time zone, where we will be for the rest of the summer.