Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

Now that I’ve mentioned this place several times, I guess it’s about time to share more of the pictures. Although the motorcycle vacation was primarily about the ride (NOT the destination), the side trip to Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill [Kentucky] was all about destination.

Shaker Village is on the US National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places. That means, if you’d like to know a brief something about why Shakers would interest me, READ THIS. Actually, I’ll tell you why they interested me, because I knew Hubby would get a kick out of seeing the old, restored buildings AND examples/demonstrations of Shaker furniture-making. That Hubby of mine is not only very handsome (and smart, and funny, and great at baking cinnamon rolls), he’s also very good at woodworking. I should emphasize VERY GOOD. Not just ’cause he built us a house (I was the unskilled laborer), but because he can actually make furniture and other stuff, too.

In the “other stuff” category is this workbench, which he built to help with the furniture-making process.

Hubby's Workbench (scanned image)

Then there’s the very nice TV-surround thing he built in our family room.

Hubby's hand-made entertainment center.

And here’s our awesome (and huge) bed.

The king-sized bed Hubby made.

Since this picture was taken, he’s also made two matching night stands. Our room is no longer Southwest-style either. I still like that look, we just got tired of looking at it. It’s much more contemporary now. Anyhoo…

I knew Hubby would like the whole Shaker thing. So when I stumbled across the Shaker Village Web site, and saw it was not too terribly far away from the mountains, I thought it might be interesting. When I saw that there is an inn on the premises — The Inn at Shaker Village — I knew we HAD to go. The very brief description I saw of the place was enough to convince me.

“The Inn encompasses more than 70 guest rooms, suites and private cottages spread throughout 13 restored 19th century buildings. Inn accommodations feature Shaker reproduction furniture, hardwood flooring and private baths.”

That’s how I tend to do my travel planning. It’s never all about me. I try to find stuff everyone can enjoy. Of course, learning there was yet another element to Shaker Village didn’t hurt my decision either…

Critter Alert!

You know how I like critters. Especially cows. I just KNEW there’d be cows. That didn’t influence my decision a bit. 🙂

Cool Bull That's Not Really a Bull

There was even a bull! Sort of. He looked like a bull. And was grumpy like a bull. But one of my coworkers informed me yesterday that my “bull” isn’t a bull at all. It’s a steer.

But back to the furniture thing. I should have said “woodworking” because there’re also things like this spiral staircase.

Staircase

That image above is just a snapshot. Again, this wasn’t a ToadMama photography trip. It was a vacation for Hubby and I. So I just took a quick pic and moved on. If you want to see some cool pictures of the complete TWIN SPIRAL STAIRCASE, this link to some Flickr search results of other peoples’ pics might work.

Workshop viewed through window.
Some examples of Shaker style and functionality.

Of course all of the buildings featured those iconic Shaker peg rails. Even I knew what a Shaker peg rail/rack was. What I did not realize was that the rails went entirely around every room. What I also didn’t realize is that the peg rails are far more than coat racks.

Check out the multi-holed candle sconce in that last image. You can’t see the hole in the top of the clock because of the little placard, but the hole is there. Why? So the clock or candle holder in this case can be moved to wherever they are needed. The clock is set at a fixed height, but with five holes in the sconce, it can not only be moved around the room, but the height can be adjusted up or down.

Hubby's attempt at filling all of the pegs.

You’ll note that the little cabinet, which houses the TV here, also has those holes/hangers. So even wall cabinets can be moved as needed.

Hubby had more fun pretending the pegs were all for hanging general stuff, though. He did a pretty good job filling the majority of the pegs in our sizable room (about 20′ x 20′ with room for two double beds).

Our room was in the West Family Sister's Shop.

As you can maybe imagine, there were lots of interesting things to see.

Shaker buildings.

I just love the clean lines of the buildings. And the colors, which are reminiscent (maybe even the reason for) colors typical of “primitive” country decor.

Goat.

I just loved the dark, blue-black color of this outbuilding and MANY of the barns we saw throughout this particular region.

Cool rock walls.

I forgot to mention the rock walls. Rock walls fascinate me. I’m not sure why. Other than the fact that I’ve always found rocks interesting AND love building stuff using Lego’s.

Did I mention the cows?

Friendly Cows

The cows were either just very friendly OR they liked having their picture taken. Or both.

I commented to the same co-worker who let me know my bull isn’t a bull, that she’d have to tell me why this cow has horns (those teats are made for milking! Remember the Nancy Sinatra song…”those teats are made-for-milking; that’s just what they’ll do; one of these days those teats are gonna shoot milk over you?). I thought only boy cows had horns.

My guess WAS that this was a steer (that’s a boy cow, right?), until I learned that my “bull” is a steer. SIGH.

Can you tell I haven’t spent much time on a farm?

Since I’ve already admitted to my lack of real farm animal knowledge, can someone tell me why this one sheep (or are they goats) appears to be spotted?

I think these are both sheep. It's hard to tell, though, because they're naked.

There’s a pretty good restaurant at the inn, too. It was the best dinner we’d had all week.

If you enjoyed the few Shaker Village pics I shared here, be sure to view this Shaker Village Slideshow on my Flickr site.

And don’t forget to COMMENT if you enjoyed today’s post. An awful lot of my fans are very quiet.

Come on, people. Give me some comment love!

Middlesboro to Pleasant Hill

I have to say, I was a bit upset to walk outside and see FOG on Wednesday morning. Not because of what it would mean for riding, but because we were in Middlesboro to see the Cumberland Gap (a pass through the mountains). But all the mountains within view of the hotel were obscured by FOG.

See those lovely mountains? No? That's because it's FOGGY.

Initially, I’d hoped to leave around 9:00AM. I wanted to spend some time in the national park and have lunch at Cumberland Falls while still allowing enough time to reach our destination before nightfall. Since it was foggy, there was no need to hurry. So we strolled next door for breakfast. It just so happened there was a Hardees mere feet away from our hotel. That is CLASS, right?

Hardees was a very popular place.

Notice who else was there? Here’s a closer look…

The town mortician enjoys Hardees biscuits, too.

After a leisurely breakfast, we moseyed back to our room to pack up our stuff. We were both on a motorcycle. Just how much stuff could we have to pack?

Yay for luggage trolleys!

That’s a lot more stuff than one would think, isn’t it? We really were happy to have a luggage cart available. That’s a lot of stuff to schlepp back and forth.

By the time we were finally ready, the fog had cleared. So off to the national park we went.

My bike after a couple of rainy days riding through coal country.

Take a look at how dirty my poor bike was. Know what’s scary? My legs were just as dirty. My cool, assless leather chaps need polishing!

In front of the visitor's center at Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

We didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend at the park, so we hurried off to the Pinnacle Overlook, which is 2,440 feet above the valley floor.

Cumberland Gap
Cumberland Gap
Hubby at the Pinnacle Overlook.
Cumberland Gap

See what we would have missed if the fog hadn’t cleared?

The mountain view included three states: Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

After a nice, long look at the Cumberland Gap, it was back on the bikes for about a 160-mile ride to our final destination. After a nice little cheese-and-crackers lunch at Cumberland Falls.

ToadMama atop Cumberland Falls.
Looking down river from atop Cumberland Falls.
Hubby heading to the foot of the falls.
The happy couple at Cumberland Falls.

I think we have more pictures of the two of us during this vacation than ever before. Probably because now I have a point-and-shoot AND my big camera.

Anyway…

We had our lunch, finished a fabulous run through Daniel Boone National Forest, and a splendid ride through the flatter part of Kentucky, ending around 5:30 at the Shaker village.

That’s where we transformed from mountain-riding bikers into somewhat civilized folk.

The hallway outside our room in the West Family Sister's House.

I’ll share more Shaker Village pictures soon. It was a VERY cool little place. If 3,000 acres is little…

Don’t forget to check out the map of the day’s ride.

Pipestem to Middlesboro

Our second riding day dawned cool and cloudy. Oh boy!

And we had about 250 miles to ride…

We didn’t hit much rain. In most places the rain had passed through just a short time before us. So, while we weren’t being rained on, the roads were wet. And we were still riding through coal country.

Before I elaborate, check out this picture. We were stopped for road construction. The type and quality of this road is pretty indicative of what we experienced for most of our ride. NICE. But that’s not why I took the picture. I snapped this particular shot so I’d remember to ask Hubby what was up with the weird water tower thing you see here. Sometimes, water would trickle out of the top, then it would gush. Trickle, gush, trickle, gush. Why would a water tower do that?

Weird Water Tower Thing

We sat there for about 10 minutes. It was boring. So I also took this picture of Hubby while we waited.

Hubby says hello.

As for riding through coal country on wet roads… have you ever driven in places like Western MD and PA where they use cinders on the icy roads instead of salt? City slickers who complain about salt making their cars dirty have nothing on folks who drive through places that use cinders. That stuff is DIRTY. It is, after all, the non-combustible material that remains after coal has been thoroughly burned.

Driving through coal country on wet roads is like driving through roads covered with cinders. Dirty. Check out how my windshield looked after only about two hours!

Yes, that was another construction stop. There weren’t too many of them as it might seem from the pictures I’ve taken during those stops. Those just happen to be good photo ops.

We're about to enter Kentucky.

Speaking of good photo ops… that Hubby of mine is pretty good. Even though all my picture taking does drive him crazy at times, he still knows when to stop for some shots. Like in front of this “Welcome to Kentucky” sign.

Uh oh.

The sky had been alternating between blue and ominous all day. At lunchtime, it was mostly blue. So we stripped off all the rain gear. A couple of hours later, as we crossed some pretty high mountains on US-119 south of Whitesburg, KY, we were rethinking that decision. But our road could have been leading away from the storms, right?

Is that blue sky?

Yes, we could have been heading for an area with blue skies.

Cool road!

The angle of that above shot is not contrived. The read really was that steep. You could hear trucks (big-ass coal trucks, remember?) laboring to climb the mountain.

Me alongside the cool road.

I really was hoping we’d miss the rain. I mean, there were quite a few patches of clear sky.

Look at all those mountains!

As you’ve probably guessed, we did get rained on a bit more. But that was the last rain of the trip. Woo hoo!

We were happy to make it to Middlesboro safely and looked forward to the next day which is when we planned to visit the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

Here’s an interactive map of the day’s route if you’re interested.

Romney to Pipestem

Ah, I can finally get back to the trip report.

As I mentioned previously, our first day of riding was wet and cold. And that was a real shame, because we rode on some really great roads. The best road of all was WV-20 from Buckhannon to Pipestem. It was awesome. Smooth pavement. Lots of curves. Winding through rural areas and forest. You can follow this link to the Google Map of the route if you are interested.

Hubby and I know we’ll be going back to that road one day. When the weather is nice and we can REALLY enjoy it even more.

As the saying goes, though, a bad day of riding is still better than a great day at the office. Even if we were COLD and wet, it was fun.

We actually stayed at Pipestem Resort State Park for two nights. Not because of the weather. That was the plan from the beginning. I knew we could either spend some time riding in the area or exploring the park or both. It’s a resort park, meaning there’s a full-service lodge (think hotel) plus other cool stuff like cottages and cabins, golf and swimming pools, a nature center and even an aerial tram (more on that later), just to name a few.

Hubby in lodge parking lot.

That shot of Hubby (he swears he was smiling) was taken in front of McKeever Lodge, where we stayed. There are actually two lodges at Pipestem. There’s McKeever Lodge, which you can drive to, and Mountain Creek Lodge, which sits along a river in a gorge and is only accessible by aerial tramway.

Our room at the lodge.

Our room was one floor above ground level overlooking the playground and gorge.

Scenic overlook along a park road.

It was still pretty cool and overcast on Monday morning, so we opted for a walking tour of the park.

Aerial tramway sign.

Our first stop was the Canyon Rim Center, which is where the aerial tramway is located.

Tramway disappearing into the gorge.

The ride down is free, but you have to pay to ride back up. We both found that sort of funny. Once down there, who wouldn’t want to pay for a ride back to the top?

Hubby walking along the Bluestone River.

There’s a river at the foot of the gorge. The Mountain Creek Lodge sits right beside the Bluestone River.

The sun kept trying to poke through the clouds.

The foliage wasn’t nearly as colorful as I’d hoped, but it was still pretty.

Big rock in river.

It was a very rocky place. There were rocks of every shape and size along the river bank.

Large rock outcrop on wall of gorge.

There were also HUGE rocks hanging from the wall of the gorge. If we didn’t want to pay for the tramway, that’s the “hill” we would’ve had to climb. We, of course, paid to ride.

Blue sky!

By the time we were headed back to the lodge, there was actually blue sky poking through the clouds. That’s was VERY good news. Because we had to ride into town for gas (we were both on fumes). Plus I wanted to check out this scenic overlook I’d seen the previous day on the way in.

Overlook above New River.

This overlook is right beside WV-20, just north of Hinton, West Virginia. And Hinton is 12 miles north of Pipestem.

Hubby and I (with helmet hair) at the New River overlook.

We knew the good weather wouldn’t last forever, so we didn’t stick around for long.

Bluestone Lake

We also had to stop at Bluestone Lake, which is also beside WV-20, about halfway between Hinton and Pipestem.

Bluestone Lake

If you look to the far left in the picture above you’ll see the road. And the rocky cliffs. Try to ignore the ugly black power line, okay?

The lobby at McKeever Lodge.

The lodge has this great lobby, with a fireplace, and a wall of windows so you have a really nice view of the gorge.

That’s not Hubby on the sofa. He was in the gift shop buying a book (he forgot his). I can’t make fun of him for forgetting a book. I forgot my sweatshirt, which is one of the reasons I was so cold the previous day. You can bet I bought one on Monday morning. AND a cool jacket that makes me look like a park ranger. 🙂

That’s about it for our Pipestem visit. Shortly after I took this picture in the lobby, we had dinner and then went to bed. We had another long day of riding to prepare for…

Home Sweet Home

We made it back to the West Virginia place. It was only 441 miles. We left Natural Bridge, Kentucky at 8:30 AM and arrived here around 7:30 PM. That includes three gas stops and one stop for lunch.

Temps were in the THIRTIES when we left this morning. That is really damn cold when you’re on a motorcycle. Trust me.

It did warm up eventually. But not until a couple of hours after we’d been on the road.

It was foggy, too. For about the first hour, we alternated between pea-soup fog and blinding sun, freezing the whole time. It was fun. Fortunately we were on a parkway (highway) and not some crazy, windy, mountain roads.

After the short stint on the highway, we dropped onto some amazing country roads. Really. Today we experienced some of the best roads of the entire trip. So even if it did start out colder-than-cold, it was all worth it. The roads were that good.

More detail tomorrow when we’re at the Maryland home. Right now, I am beat. And these pictures I’m trying to upload aren’t uploading.

So that’s all for now.

Mountainous, Interesting, and Curvaceous

Wednesday morning I was quite dismayed to see thick fog blanketing the area. QUITE dismayed. We were at the Cumberland Gap. I wanted to see mountains. And, quite frankly, we were both tired of being cold.

Lucky for us, by the time we’d finished breakfast and packed up all of our stuff, the fog had cleared. The sun was out, too. It was quite a refreshing change.

I’ll do a more-thorough trip report once we get home and I can use a full-sized computer with good photo editing software. For now, some highlights to tantalize you.

Cumberland Gap was definitely mountainous.

The Pinnacle Overlook at Cumberland Gap.

Hubby and I were in Virginia when this picture was taken. The mountains to the left of the frame are in Tennessee. The mountains to the right are in Kentucky.

Our favorite kind of road...

When we left Middlesboro, we didn’t want to do it on repeat roads. So I plotted a different track. We encountered some SERIOUSLY curvy, mountainous roads. Not fun roads, though. Challenging roads.

Wanna know what made these roads through coal country even more challenging?

Big-ass coal trucks that were sharing the roads. There’s nothing quite as disconcerting as going through a blind, hairpin turn at full lean going about 45 mph than seeing an 18-wheeler coming toward you at high speed, taking up half of your lane.

You should have seen the potholes sink holes that dotted this one stretch of road. Oh. My. GOD.

We both have big bikes, but these sink holes were large enough to eat either one of us alive.

Soon enough, however, we were entering the Daniel Boone National Forest on perfect stretches of gently curving, hilly asphalt. We were still dodging coal trucks, just not as many. We stopped at Cumberland Falls for a nice picnic lunch.

ToadMama atop Cumberland Falls.

From there it was on to our very cool destination for the evening. This was a place I didn’t tell Hubby anything about. It was a bit further west than I would’ve originally planned on heading, but once I read about the place, I couldn’t resist a visit.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill

I haven’t said much about our accommodations. I like staying in unique places. This particular spot is about as different and as interesting as they come. We spent the night at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, a restored Shaker village on a 3,000 acre piece of property.

I’m not talking a couple of buildings here people. I’m talking an entire community. Multiple buildings on a sprawling piece of real estate amidst rolling farmland. The area reminded me a lot of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Minus the Amish folk.

Moo!

The place is run by a non-profit corporation. There are not only buildings, but gardens and animals, too.

I have lots of pics to share. Later.

Thursday morning dawned even more gorgeous than the previous day. Which is good, because it was time for us to head back to the mountains.

Hubby and I on top of a huge rock outcrop.

We climbed on the bikes once again and motored east, back to the Daniel Boone National Forest. The place is FULL of giant rock cliffs. I’m talking several hundred feet tall. I’ve never seen so much rock in one state before.

We’re staying at the Natural Bridge State Park for the night. It’s a resort park, which means there’s a full-service lodge here like there was at Pipestem in West Virginia. But this one is much nicer.

Hubby enjoying our balcony.

Our room has a balcony overlooking the forest. The door is open as I am typing. It’s dark outside, so all I hear are tree frogs, insects, and falling acorns. Soon enough I’ll hear Hubby snoring.

I guess I’d better end this post now. We’re not sure where we’ll end the day tomorrow. There’s about 450 miles between here and our WV place. If we have the energy, we’ll ride all the way. If we don’t, we’ll just stop somewhere for the night. As long as we’re back in Maryland at some point on Saturday…

– – – – – – – – – –

One more thing. Today is my Mom’s birthday. I did not forget. I just don’t have a picture handy here to post. But I can still say…

Happy Birthday, Mawsie!!!