We drove down to Madison, Indiana first to go to our favorite fudge shop, the Madison Fudge Factory & Guest Suites. What a great way to start the trip than with fudge, and theirs is among the best! As we crossed the Ohio River on U.S. 42, we noticed the Madison Regatta was taking place. Traffic was stopped on the bridge, so we got to see some of the power boats doing their thing on the Ohio River as we crossed on 421.
We took U.S. 421 down to the Bluegrass Parkway in Kentucky over to US 31W. We stopped off at the Wigwam Village in Cave City, only to find a banner stating “Back By Popular Demand…Under New Management”. This made us a little nervous, as we knew how hard owner Ivan John worked to bring the Wigwam back to its former glory. We found a young man, appearing to be in his 20’s, behind the counter. We had brought the American Road issue from last year that featured the Wigwam as the Memory Motel to give to Ivan. We asked the young man if he was the owner and he said he and his uncle were. They purchased it from Ivan this past April, as he retired and moved to Hawaii. We showed him the magazine, told him who we were, and he seemed very grateful we brought the magazine by. He seemed like a bright guy, so Jennifer & I seemed to think later Ivan wouldn’t have sold it to anyone who didn’t share his vision. Time will tell.
We rolled into Nashville early in the evening and finally found a good mom & pop motel on US 70S in town. The Midway Motel was a nice little place, as the owner graciously let us look at a room first. It was clean, no bugs, and the king size bed had its own zip code! However, just looking for picture of the place on Google, I found a story where someone was murdered there last August…3 rooms down from ours. Gee, that soiled our view of the place! OK, we then went downtown to Broadway where all the honky tonks are. The crowd down there was unique…a mix of halter tops and cowboy hats, women passing out passes to their “clubs”, and a couple of party buses driving around. The neon was pretty good though. We ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and then called it a night.
On Sunday, we went around Nashville for a bit and took some photos of old signs.
We headed east out of Nashville on U.S. 70. Jennifer had some fun with Streets & Trips planning this trip, and it was worth it in the end. We saw some awesome scenery that you wouldn’t have seen on the interstate…and we even ran over a snake slithering across the road. Just don’t anyone tell Bob Waldmire about it, OK?
We first went through Lebanon…
We followed U.S. 70N, to TN 53 north. We followed TN 53 until it became KY 61. We followed that until we turned east onto KY 90, then U.S. 127.
We then saw a place called Granny’s Ice Cream & Soda Fountain, as well as Pioneer Antiques and Collectibles. We stopped there and looked around at the antiques and had some ice cream.We followed U.S. 127 to KY 49 north to KY 78, to KY 243. On KY 243, we saw a snake slithering across the road and unfortunately, couldn’t stop in time to avoid it. Amber has seen the photo Pat took of the snake, and she has named him Snakey.
And thanks to Denny Gibson, we stopped in at Penn’s Store for some good local chat and a visit with the many feline friends there. The place is as deep in the hills of Kentucky as one could get, but the stop was worth it.
We then headed up U.S. 68, toward the town of High Bridge, KY, named after the railroad bridge crossing the Kentucky River.
We continued on U.S. 68 for a short time, until we turned on KY 169, then to KY 33. Then we turned east onto U.S. 62 and north onto U.S. 127. We continued north on Bypass U.S. 127 until we reached U.S. 60 in Frankfort, and headed west on U.S. 60.
By this time, it was getting late in the day, and although we had intended on being back in Indy by nightfall, we were looking at 11 pm at the earliest, so we decided to find a place for the night. We continued on U.S. 60 into Louisville, then crossed into Indiana on U.S. 31. We pulled off at a motel off US 31 in Clarksville, IN.
Today, we took US 150 west and had a decent breakfast at Frannie’s Diner in Palmyra, IN. We were getting anxious to get home, so we took IN-337 to Orleans where we jumped on IN-37 up to Indy, with a stop in Bedford for frozen custard.
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July 2005: Nashville, Tennessee
