Here in the Near South we have Nearly Winter. There’s hardly any snow and temperatures usually stay within a tolerable range. Our Springs are glorious, Autumns colorful, and Summers are blazing hot. But Winter is mostly just blah with its miserable grey skies and weather that never gets cold enough to break out Aunt Minnie’s old fur coat.
Boone Tavern
Berea, Kentucky
Interested in Arts & Crafts? Then Berea is the place to go. It’s a modern day artist colony, wrapped around the renowned Berea College of Arts. Artisans of every ilk are showcased here, and the shops on North Broadway offer goods from a wide spectrum of hand-crafted items.
Bardstown, Kentucky
The Craft Beer Fest is becoming our Fall tradition. Each October regional brewers come to show off their specialties. It’s an evening of beer sampling from a large menu of choices. Some craft beers are very good, others are weirdly experimental, and a few are downright awful.
Bullitt County Fairgrounds
Shepherdsville, Kentucky
Wanna see a good wreck? Head on over to a Demolition Derby. You’ll scream, you’ll laugh, you’ll have a smashing good time watching old beaters careen into each other for a couple of hours.
Penn’s Store
Gravel Switch, Kentucky
Penn’s Store has been operated by the same family in the same rustic building with the old creaky floors since 1850. It’s listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and hosts “Kentucky’s only internationally recognized outhouse race” – the Great Outhouse Blowout.
New Haven, Kentucky
In late summer, just before the calendar declares that it’s Autumn, New Haven hosts the Iron Horse Festival. What’s an iron horse? A locomotive!
New Haven is our closest town for groceries and gas, and has a tiny business district where a little street fair was set up. Even though the festival is called Iron Horse there’s nothing train-themed about the fair. New Haven does have a large depot and the Kentucky Railway Museum, and locomotive rides are held on weekends. But that’s where the Iron Horse connection ends.
Maker’s Mark
Loretto, Kentucky
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Ahhhh…the perfect summer evening: Friends, food, and fine art. All within a bourbon backdrop – Chihuly and Maker’s Mark. Perfect.
Josephine Sculpture Park
Frankfort, Kentucky
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Here’s another entry under the category How Did I Not Know About This Place – the splendid Josephine Sculpture Park near Frankfort. It’s a 20-acre farm that has been carefully groomed and curated to become a wonderful sculpture garden. It’s been in place almost twenty years, but I just recently discovered it through happy accident by reading a roadside tourist sign.
Patti’s Settlement
Grand Rivers, Kentucky
Land Between the Lakes
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The little town of Grand Rivers has 350 residents and a giant establishment called Patti’s Settlement that takes up half the town.
Patti’s Settlement is the singular destination here at the headwaters of the vast recreation area known as Land Between the Lakes. LBL, as it’s called, is a large island situated between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. Both these waterways were created by damming two rivers, and a canal at Grand Rivers connects the two lakes. 
I’m sure everyone is familiar with Antiques Roadshow, the popular PBS show. Here in Kentucky we have our own version called Kentucky Collectibles. It’s aired on our local public channel, KET. We bought tickets for the show, gathered up our queerest old-timey items, and headed out to Paducah, on the far western edge of Kentucky, to join the appraisal show.