The sun does indeed shine bright on KENTUCKY

Travel America, March, 2001 by Mike Michaelson

With his opening words, "The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home," Stephen Foster immortalized the Bluegrass State, where horses, history, and hospitality highlight travel discoveries

While fine aged bourbon and blue-blooded thoroughbreds may be Kentucky's best-known icons, the state also delivers an incredible diversity of scenic and manmade attractions. Stretching from the green waters of the Ohio River and the muddy-brown waters of the Mississippi to high Appalachian peaks, Kentucky's scenery ranges from tall-grass prairie and massive lakes to rolling foothills. Vast reaches of national forest meet up with broad expanses of Bluegrass Country, where, briefly in spring, this grassland is tinted by bluish-purple buds. Kentucky has a lively German community and an authentic Shaker village (at Harrodsburg) as well as the world's most famous maker of baseball bats. You can ride on a paddlewheeler, shop for genuine mountain crafts, and enjoy down-home food such as spoon bread, fried green tomatoes, and country ham with redeye gravy. You'll find Civil War battlefields and hollows where revenue men hunted down moonshine stills and Prohibition-era bootleggers procured corn whiskey.

In Western Kentucky, Land Between the Lakes is a giant outdoor playground created in the 1930s when President Roosevelt's New Deal politics chartered the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA dammed the Tennessee River to form Kentucky Lake. Later, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Cumberland River to create Lake Barkley. Together, these lakes comprise one of the world's largest manmade bodies of water. These remarkable engineering projects also created the peninsula known as Land Between the Lakes (LBL), a 170,000-acre national recreation area that has become a major success story for tourism and conservation.

Back in 1795, when buckskin-clad Daniel Boone trekked through these parts, herds of elk and bison grazed on vast prairieland stretching toward the horizon like an inland sea. Today, a conservation effort has returned 750 acres of those tall prairie grasses and with them herds of elk and bison. Walking through restored prairie is only one of many varied experiences awaiting visitors to Land Between the Lakes. With 300 miles of undeveloped shoreline, fishing, boating, canoeing, and other water sports are major activities--as is traveling the hiking, mountain biking, and horseback trails that thread through the backwoods and along quiet lakeshore.

To tour Kentucky's horse country, set up your headquarters at Lexington, a pretty city surrounded by 450 horse farms. Many welcome visitors. You can visit as part of a tour group or with a private guide on a customized tour. Or you can go independently, provided you call ahead to make arrangements.

Keeneland Race Course, gracious with its ivy-covered stone buildings and beautifully landscaped grounds, is the spot to watch early-morning workouts. Plan a breakfast stop at the Track Kitchen, open to the public and decorated with pictures of thoroughbred champions. Owners, trainers, and jockeys meet here to talk shop.

The Kentucky Horse Park--a sort of "Sea World for Horses"--combines working horse farm and educational theme park. Dedicated to man's relationship with the horse, the park has museums, galleries, theaters, and more than 40 breeds of horse. The International Museum of the Horse traces the history of the horse through the ages. Visitors can watch the action on a racetrack and steeplechase and cross-country courses as well as in show rings and on the polo field. They can observe the arts of saddle and harness making and horseshoeing, and visit the home of the "Gentle Giants," the draft-horse barn. There are trail rides for adults, pony rides for children, and horse-drawn tours for the entire family.

Located about 40 miles south of Lexington, Berea enjoys a long-time tradition as Kentucky's "Crafts Capital," a designation bestowed on it by the Kentucky State Legislature. It is the site of Berea College, where instead of paying tuition students work up to 15 hours a week in one of the college's industries. As part of this program, they create fine furniture, woven items, ceramics, brooms, and wrought-iron pieces. The Appalachian community is home to dozens of craft studios where you'll find high quality work. A "must" spot to stay (or at least eat) is historic Boone Tavern, adjacent to Berea College Square in the heart of this picturesque town.

In Renfro Valley, south of Berea, the theaters of Renfro Valley Entertainment Center attract music fans, especially those who like country, bluegrass, and gospel. Also on the grounds are restaurants, an RV park, and craft shops in a Victorian-era village.

Louisville, the state's largest city, makes a good base for touring bourbon distilleries such as Maker's Mark and Labrot & Graham. At the Louisville Slugger Museum & Bat Factory, you'll find out all you ever wanted to know about how baseball bats are made.

Louisville, of course, is home to the Kentucky Derby--dubbed "the greatest two minutes in sports." Even if you can't make it to early May's "Run for the Roses," you'll capture the flavor of the race with a visit to the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs racetrack. Computerized hands-on displays, memorabilia, and fine art make this a fun museum. You'll travel back in time to Derbies past, weigh in on a jockey scale, and climb aboard a life-size model horse at a real starting gate. There's even an exhibit that pays tribute to the mint julep.