June 30 Drive to Hocking Hills, Ohio

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Most of us probably read Car & Driver and Road & Track magazines each month. Over the course of many Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati, etc road tests, there are continuous references to the Hocking Hills and Southeastern Ohio’s magnificent roads. Well, maybe it’s time we checked this out: if it’s good enough for motor sports journalists, it’s got to be good enough for us.

And so, June 29th to 30th, we drive to Athens for the Windy 9 (as in winding roads, not blowing air).

Want more info on why? Check out: https://www.explorehockinghills.com/blog/posts/2016/may/experience-the-thrill-of-driving-hocking-hills-famously-scenic-roads/

We’ll leave 9 am Saturday freewaying to Cincinnati, from where we’ll take 2 lane roads arriving in the Hocking Hills by 12 or so. We’ll spend the next 4 to 5 hours sampling roads following a pre-planned route, stopping in Athens for the night. Sunday, we’ll drive more of the hills until around 1 PM or so, before heading back to Louisville via Maysville and Paris. Some of our stops may include the one remaining, still in operation, washboard factory.

Please RSVP so we can get a head count and try to arrange a group rate at a motel. Food, lodging all responsibility of attendees.

May 2019 Activity Report

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The Kentucky Region covers a territory 200 miles wide by 120 miles North to South. Of our 480 members, 410 reside in the greater Louisville area, at the North East corner of the region. 20 members are in the south and 50 in the West (and 1 in Belgium).

This month, we decided to follow Horace Greeley’s advice and go West to join up with our far western neighbors. We first traveled Kentucky parkways for 90 miles prior to smaller two lane roads. Our first destination Jefferson Davis State Park, home of the world’s tallest concrete non-reinforced obelisk. Washington’s Monument stands 554 feet tall: Jeff Davis Memorial stands 351. Kentucky was a southern state during the Civil War.

Don’t know any of us would claim confederate sympathies, just wanted to see a 35 story concrete obelisk standing in the middle of a farm field.

Our next stop was the Casey Jones distillery, where we met some of our western members, located outside of Hopkinsville, KY. The distillery was named neither for the famed engineer, nor the Grateful Dead song, but for an early moonshiner from the woods of far Western KY, whose grandson operates it today using the original still design. His shine was the only liquor acceptable to Al Capone, himself a native of the same area.

After touring the modest, but attractive distillery, we all repaired to a local BBQ for lunch (and home made coconut cream pie) prior to the long drive home.

Would that have been all, it would have been enough, except the region also attended the annual Joe and Jane Galownia Steak and Wine party, a pre-purchase inspections tech session from Mitch at Stuttgart Specialists and KYPCA Ladies Night at the local Massage Envy hosted by the lovely Vycki Minstein.