Pine Mountain Resort State Park - Pineville, Kentucky
September 8 - 10
(first motorcycle rally via Honda Pilot)
I left Thursday evening to drive to Becky's so we could get an early start on Friday for our 8 hour drive. Hurricane Irma was bypassing the Wilmington area on its way to the Keys. The weather for the weekend turned out to be beautiful sun filled days.
We arrived at the lodge late afternoon in time to register, hang out and go to our lodge room before the welcome reception and dinner (hamburgers and fixings). After checking out all the ride options for Saturday, we decided on the Courthouse Chase and a stop at the original KFC (Harlan Sanders Cafe and Museum) in North Corbin, KY.
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| Getting away from Irma at the MOA Getaway |
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| Pine Mountain Resort State Park |
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| Our room bottom floor last on left |
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| Hi Viz K1600GT from Canada |
Saturday morning at breakfast we met Jean - Guy Beaudet (Jean) who wanted to join us on our excursion. Our destination was three Kentucky County Courthouses (Harlan, Leslie and Bell). The roads were great, passing through the mountains and valleys of Appalachia. We drove the Kingdom Come Parkway to Harlan. We had to take pictures of the WWI Memorial statue and the Coal Miners Memorial.
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| Harlan County Courthouse and WWI Memorial |
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| Becky and Jean at Coal Miners Memorial |
On to the next courthouse in Hyden. Pictures here were a plaque of WWI Medal of Honor Recipient Willie Sandlin and a plaque dedicated to Mothers and Babies.
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| Willie Sandlin |
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| Mothers and Babies Plaque |
Our next stop was at Harlan Sanders Cafe and museum. Sanders moved to Corbin in 1930 and started a service station across the street from the present cafe. He served meals for travelers in the back of the station at his own dining table. In 1937 he built the Sanders Cafe which operated until he sold it in 1956 when Interstate 75 was built and bypassed the restaurant. It was opened as a museum in 1990. (Listed on RoadsideAmerica.com)
The three of us opted out of having KFC for lunch and decided to have lunch at the Oven Mitt in Barbourville.
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| Check out the upside down lamp shades |
The third courthouse on our list was back in Pineville. We needed to take a picture of the Bell County K-9 Memorial and the Bell County Courthouse. The plaque at the K-9 Memorial was for Sean Pursifull and his partner King who gave their life in the line of duty on January 10, 2008 when a suspect fleeing police crashed his car into the police cruiser.
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| Bell County Courthouse |
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| K-9 Memorial |
Pine Mountain State Park was only a couple miles down the road but Becky and I were not finished for the day. We left Jean at the entrance to the lodge and continued on the road to Lookout Point and the trail to Chained Rock.
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| View of Pineville from Pine Mountain |
It is a half mile downward climb to see Chained Rock. The story of the chain rock: above the town of Pineville there are 2 boulders chained together to keep them from crashing down on the town and destroying it. The chain weighing 3,000 pounds and 100 feet long was brought up by pack mules and boy scouts!! This is also on RoadsideAmerica.com.
Now the climb to the top of the rock (a narrow, steep and winding trail) to where the chain is anchored and then brought across to the "falling" rock.
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| CONGRATULATIONS! we made it |
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| Beautiful View! |
What goes down must come up. Now the climb back up the mountain to the parking lot. We got back just in time to have Nancy see our pictures for the courthouse contest and get ready for the buffet dinner. Nancy and Bill hosted this MOA Getaway and after dinner presented many door prizes and two grand prizes (a one way bike transport given by BikeHaul and a free admission to next years Getaway). Nancy asked me to draw the winning names for the door prizes and amazingly one of the names I drew was mine ... a MOA wine glass. We all got goody bags when we registered which included a t-shirt and a MOA bag.
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