Do you know who lived at Butcher Hollow?

After a nice stay along Kentucky's Mountain Parkway, we are heading to new adventures up U.S. Highway 23--also known as the Country Music Highway. It is here that musicians like Chris Stapleton, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tom T. Hall, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakum, The Judds, and Patty Loveless first sang their songs. We parked the motor home at the Walmart in Paintsville, and unhooked the pickup so we could drive it on some of the narrowest roads in Kentucky. Our drive today took us through the town of Van Lear, where the house lots are so shallow that the road goes right past the front door. Residents have to park their vehicles across the street.

We couldn't even count the number of times we drove the pickup around a blind one-lane curve, and breathed a sigh of relief that we weren't in the motor home for this trip. Even with the bad roads, we were dedicated to making the drive to Butcher Hollow today.

We stopped in at Webb's Grocery, where we purchased two $5 tickets for the home tour. The cashier had to close the store to take us on the tour, and we had a hard time keeping up with his old red pickup as we followed him to the home site.

He stopped to unlock the gate and we followed another fan into Butcher Hollow--the birthplace of . . . Loretta Lynn! Now do you remember the words from her song, "Well I was borned a coal miner's daughter . . .

 . . . in a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler." Welcome to that cabin here in the holler.

It was here that Ted and Clara Webb, raised their eight children-- of which four signed recording contracts. Our grocery store clerk/tour guide is a cousin of this family, and had lots of stories to tell as we walked through the little house. 

Webb's grocery store had a few museum-like displays from those Webb kids. It was interesting to see a deer head right beside one of Loretta Lynn's performance dresses. The display also includes Loretta's little sister--Crystal Gayle--a star in her own right.

The walls of the old house are covered with a mix of old family pictures and newer celebrity posters.

The walls were also covered by signatures of fans that made their way to Butcher Hollow to leave a message for Loretta Lynn. That's why the family now keeps the doors and gates locked. It was nice to have a tour guide that could explain pictures and tell stories about the family. He also explained things that weren't accurate in the movie about Loretta Lynn's life--The Coal Miner's Daughter.

From the inside of the cabin, with its single bulb lighting, we could tell that the song was true, "We were poor, but we had love--that's the one thing Daddy made sure of. He shoveled coal to make a coal miner's dollar."

Our tour guide explained that the grounds look different now. When Loretta Lynn grew up here, they would have had a large garden, and crops surrounding the house. He also explained that the out house had been upgraded in recent years.

After our very interesting tour at Butcher Hollow, we continued down the road to our last Kentucky camp site. We had a very nice site at Yatesville State Park. This campground gets great reviews, and we certainly see why.

But upon check-in, we were given a packet of papers that we assumed were trail maps and lake information. Instead, it was 16 pages of prohibited activities. That is not a typo--it was 16 pages! We didn't even know there were that many things to do in a state park--much less that many things that we couldn't do! In all our years of camping, we have never seen anything like this.

They obviously don't allow any trouble-makers here, so they have more time to keep things neat and clean. They have some of the prettiest flower beds we have ever seen in a state park.

Even though we didn't get much trail information in that packet, we did find a few on our own. All of the trails seemed to be steep as they headed to the water.

Yatesville Lake was beautifully calm when we made our first walk around the grounds. 

Besides the RV camp sites in our area, this state park also has hike-in and boat-in camping sites that are nicely secluded with views of the water. If you didn't mind carrying all your camping supplies for a mile or so, these would be great.

On our second day, we decided to put the kayak out on Yatesville Lake. It wasn't as calm as the day before, and we hoped we didn't get rained on.

Now on the water, we could check out the boat-in camping spots. Some of the reviews on these sites complain about how hard it is to unload all of your camping gear out of a boat, over the rocks, and up the hill. It sounds like Kentucky campers have to be rugged outdoorsman just to set up camp.

While we were checking out the camp sites from the water, this deer was checking us out.

The highlight of our paddle was seeing a bright flash of red on the far shore. As we rowed closer, we saw that all that red was coming from an entire bank of rose bushes. This shore must have once been a pioneer home site, because these were more colorful than the wild roses we usually see.

These brilliant roses were at the peak bloom, and we felt like we had wandered into another of God's wonders here on the lake.

This lake is huge, and by rowing 6.4 miles we just explored a couple long coves. This cove had a nice rocky edge, with a shelf that jutted into the lake. Mark got out of the kayak to stretch his legs and stand on that ledge.

Denisa rowed away to take that last picture, and Mark was just a little worried that she might not come back to pick him up.

The rain clouds were thickening, and we decided it was time to head back to the motor home before we got wet. We did get everything put away just in time, but we spent the rest of day waiting for the rain to quit. This would have been a great time to get some trip planning done, but we had almost no cell phone service and no internet here at remote Yatesville Lake State Park. We got a little bored, and were thinking about breaking one of those rules mentioned in that 16-page handout. But instead, we reminisced about the good two days we have had visiting places like Butcher Hollow and Yatesville Lake--our last stops in Kentucky.