I am not skilled at cameras. For the most part, I've avoided cameras, especially being captured by them, most of my life. As such, I make no promises to the quality of the photographs or videos I took along the trip. I've also learned that when doing videos, I want to look the speaker (in this case me) in the face, which means my eyes keep looking away from the camera lens. I do try to be more conscious about it, but looking someone in the eye is a hard habit to break.
Life can be pretty hectic, especially during 2020. I've worked through a lot of stuff over the years, keeping my head down to survive and hopefully better my situation through pure stubborn bullheadedness. One of the consequences of which is I've been unable to travel back tothe West Coast when I lost family. As such, there are a few bequeathed items that have been waiting in someone else's care for going on twenty years. Specifically a marble mantle clock from my paternal great-grandmother's family and my maternal grandmother's antique hand-made rocking chair.
2020 has SUCKED in so many ways even as a writer I don't have enough words to do it justice. Writer's block, job problems, health issues, and oh, you know, a pandemic. We lost our conventions too, divorcing us from our tribes and locking us down in our little boxes. As for me, I've spent most of my life moving around, and not being able to move around has been uncomfortable. I've lived in many states and visited 47 of the 50 United States - still need Maine, South Dakota and Alaska.
Still, I don't like just throwing my hands in the air and giving up. At the end of 2020 I sat with a month's worth of vacation days normally used to attend conventions. My dayjob has a use it or loose it policy, so November seemed like a really good time to cross the country and fetch those heirlooms. I reached out to you guys, without telling you why I was asking, and got a list of places you thought I should visit around the country. Those that could be routed along my way were added to the trip...a bare outline with a few landmarks remeniscient of the way I write novels.
So let's get started....
Day 2
As I mentioned in the video, my intended short look around in Game Galaxy Arcade turned into hours of digital mayhem. I left late, grabbing a meal on my way north toward the home of the DM for my former Dungeons and Dragons gaming group and his family. He's the one responsible for all of the props we showcased way back when during my all too short sojourn playing again.
Rather than waste a hotel night on only a few hours’ sleep, I camped out at a rest area where I encountered the first of many pay phones I thought should be documented. Having lived in my car at certain points in my past, camping out in my relatively luxurious manual drive CX-5 wasn't all that hard. A quick splash of water to the face, a quick video and I was off to the races.
BJ and kin gave me a walking tour around downtown Bardstown. We headed over to a civil war village recreation. I wanted to get a better photo of the watermill, so I decided to throw myself down a hill. Art is pain, right?
Once I'd limped back to the car, we stopped by a barn being rented to hand tobacco to dry. New to me, I got a couple of photos. A quick visit to the Jim Bean distillery - closed, and we were off to an old diner for a long overdue breakfast. I'd have liked to visit longer, but the front end of my trip had deadlines that had to be observed.
The rest of the day was all gas and gos, heading off to the next of the reader recommended locations. We'll talk about that gorgeous locale in the next blog. In the meantime, here are the pictures from day 2.
