Kentucky Lake 2010

Ken-Lake State Park on Kentucky Lake, one of many on this huge lake and sister lake Barkley and the vast "Land between the Lakes" area. As I mentioned earlier Bev and I camped and fished here back in 1973 on one of our first "away from home camping trips" and had a wonderful time. Today we were going to look for a restaurant we ate at back then, and I found out before heading out from the camp office the place was called The Iron Kettle. This Iron Kettle was in a small town on the Lake call Grand Rivers, so off we went this morning with the GPS loaded with this information. We found a number of quaint little places but non called the Iron Kettle so we ended up eating lunch at Patti's which turned out to be the best place in town and just plain great homemade meals and deserts.
After getting a few post cards to send to the grand kids we went to the Post Office the get some stamps and mail our cards. I was chatting with the gal behind the counter about our 1973 trip and our wanting to find The Iron Kettle and eat some of that homemade cobbler they served but had no luck and wasn't even sure where it was at. She told me it had been right across the street from the IGA but burnt to the ground about a year ago, and since they had too little insurance couldn't rebuild. You know small towns, everyone knows everything about everybody it seems and so it goes. We weren't nuts though because after talking to numerous residents after learning what had happen they all agreed it was the place to eat before it burnt just over a year ago..............how sad we could not have that hot off the cook stove cobbler we were so looking forward to.

We drove into Paducah to a CVS to pick up some things and while driving around back and forth to Paducah and back to the Lake and around here and around there we still hadn't seen anything that jogged our memory with regards to where we camped back in '73 and had no clue as to a name of a campground or nothing. We went back into Grand Rivers to the IGA to pickup a few items and took another road back to the campground. On the way back we're talking and trying to remember anything we could, then I seen a sign that said Johnathan Creek something and I said to Bev that sounds kind of familiar to me...........Bev said no I still think it was Bear something or something with Bear in it and then all of a sudden we round a bend and see "Lakeside Campground" and both say together "this is it..........as we pass it and cross "Johnathan Creek" at the end of a finger of the Lake. Jeep turned on a dime and we went back and into the camp and right away remembered about where we camped but the grass and dirt was gone and it had been replaced with gravel for the roadways and camp sites. Many more campers in the area and not near as quaint with gravel rather than grass and dirt roads but still this was place and we both smiled at each other with a certain twinkle! Our love is stronger today than ever!

We've decided to just jet our way to Iowa tomorrow, we're actually only about 8 hours out of Davenport so I guess this end of the journey is over and now back and forth across Iowa a couple of times in the next week or two and then towards Phoenix via Texas and cousin Walt. Still alot of journey and stories ahead so stay tuned because I'll continue to blog almost daily don't ya know.