There were several recent motivations for the trip this year. Mary has wanted to visit the National Quilt Museum in Paducah for some time. I had logged finds of geocaches in every US state except Arkansas. Since Paducah is less than two hours from the Arkansas border, I decided to take the state off my to-do list. The last major motivation for the trip at this time is the Kentucky Garden Trail. On a field trip with Scott County Master Gardeners in June, we visited the Waterfront Botanical Gardens in Louisville and really enjoyed it so we decided to visit all 12 of the botanical gardens in the state. Two gardens on the list are in Western Kentucky.
After breakfast and exercise at Planet Fitness, we left home picking up the Bluegrass Parkway outside of Lexington. The trip would take about four hours but would seem like three hours since we would cross into the Central Time Zone as we traveled west. We stopped for fuel in Bardstown where we had lunch of cold cut sandwiches that we brought from home. We had corn nuts to snack on as we drove. At Elizabethtown, we picked up the Western Kentucky Parkway and continued through towns like Dawson Springs, that had been wiped out by a tornado in 2021.
Our first stop was in Madisonville, at Mahr Park Arboretum where we admired the beautifully groomed 265-acre municipal park. The Mahr family owned the property from 1964 until donating the land to the city of Madisonville in 2009. We enjoyed the well-labelled trees and shrubs throughout the park. We chatted with the volunteer at the park entrance for some time and got stamps for our Kentucky Garden Trail Passports then decided to continue on to Murray, Kentucky.
The drive to Murray from Madisonville was only about 90 minutes through the beautiful Western Kentucky landscape.
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| Doran Arboretum |
There was no attendant at the Doran Arboretum at Murray State University but we were directed to a large mailbox where we could pick up the Garden Trail Passport stamp. The only other person we saw was a young woman on a mower who we gathered was a Murray State student. The grounds of the arboretum were beautiful with trees, shrubs and perennial flowers displayed and labeled. We walked out to the apiary where several bee hives were active. The whole property was very impressive.
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| Mantle Rock |
From Murray, we started toward Paducah but saw a trailhead for Mantle Rock Preserve and decided to stop. We learned that the trail that we were on was part of the Trail of Tears, the path that the Cherokee were forced to travel to Oklahoma in 1838. In total over of 60,000 members of the “five civilized tribes” and their black slaves were removed to western territories between 1830 and 1850. In the winter of 1838-39, nearly 1,800 Cherokees took refuge at Mantle Rock since the extreme cold winter had make the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers difficult to cross.
As we drove, we saw that Possum Trot, Kentucky was nearby so we couldn’t resist stopped by. As expected there was really nothing in the small village but we took a few snapshots of the sign then continued on to Purple Toad Winery. Although we seldom drink wine, we had seen wine from this winery at our Kroger store and stopped to see what we could learn. The visitor center offered free tastings of eight wines and four distilled spirits of our choice. All of their wines and spirits are made on site at the Paducah location. We each tasted our eight wine choices and liked a few. Most of the wines from Purple Toad are very sweet dessert wines but their information sheet identified each wine’s sweetness on a 1-5 scale. We picked out a couple of bottles to buy then sampled some of the spirits. Several spirits including vodka and moonshine are made using their grapes as the based material for fermentation. We sampled some of the bourbons and clear spirits and found them to be fine but not exceptional so we elected to only buy the wine.
When we arrived at the Super 8 Motel in Paducah we checked in quickly and found the motel to be clean and quiet. We were very happy with the daily rate on the room and moved our things into the second floor room.
After changing clothes and relaxing a bit, we checked restaurant ratings and decided on Strickland’s Seafood House which was just a few blocks from our motel. We both ordered the Harris Platter which is an assortment of fish, crabcake, clams and shrimp. Our meals were very good and we returned to the Super 8 where we read then turned in for the night.
As we drove, we saw that Possum Trot, Kentucky was nearby so we couldn’t resist stopped by. As expected there was really nothing in the small village but we took a few snapshots of the sign then continued on to Purple Toad Winery. Although we seldom drink wine, we had seen wine from this winery at our Kroger store and stopped to see what we could learn. The visitor center offered free tastings of eight wines and four distilled spirits of our choice. All of their wines and spirits are made on site at the Paducah location. We each tasted our eight wine choices and liked a few. Most of the wines from Purple Toad are very sweet dessert wines but their information sheet identified each wine’s sweetness on a 1-5 scale. We picked out a couple of bottles to buy then sampled some of the spirits. Several spirits including vodka and moonshine are made using their grapes as the based material for fermentation. We sampled some of the bourbons and clear spirits and found them to be fine but not exceptional so we elected to only buy the wine.
When we arrived at the Super 8 Motel in Paducah we checked in quickly and found the motel to be clean and quiet. We were very happy with the daily rate on the room and moved our things into the second floor room.
After changing clothes and relaxing a bit, we checked restaurant ratings and decided on Strickland’s Seafood House which was just a few blocks from our motel. We both ordered the Harris Platter which is an assortment of fish, crabcake, clams and shrimp. Our meals were very good and we returned to the Super 8 where we read then turned in for the night.
