Road Less Traveled

By now, everyone has heard of the horrible traffic that was of this past weekend on Interstate 71 near the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, KY.  Tonight, I won't belabor you with my thoughts about the long wait in traffic and my opinions on how to make changes for next year because many articles and new stories have covered it already.  No, what I am going to talk about tonight is being a "shunpiker".  Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a shunpiker as someone who uses "a side road used to avoid the toll on or the speed and traffic of a superhighway."  It is convenient these days to use interstates and parkways for travel because it allows you to go faster to your desired location by using mostly straighter roads.  However, I love going on the old roads.  Growing up one of my dreams was to drive up and down 31W and 31E from Louisville to Nashville along much of what was the old Dixie Highway.

On last week, rather than sit in traffic for an estimated 3 and half hours in order to get from this point below to Cincinnati, OH, we exited at the Prestonville and English exit on Highway 389 to Highway 42.  Highway 42 used to be one of the primary routes from Louisville to Cincinnati before the completion of I-75.  It proved to be a saving grace as most people were trying to either reach the speedway or hang in there hoping that traffic would move along so that they could get to their desire location.  Although we did not stop along at any of these towns along the way, I would love to come back through one day to venture through these towns.  Below are some of the pictures that I took along the way as we drove to Cincinnati.  Oh and by the way, this was traffic backed for 14 miles from the exit to the Kentucky Speedway at Sparta.  So....YAY to shunpiking.  I would suggest that if you ever have the time, take the opportunity to travel some of these roads that at one point in time was the primary means of travel.  You may happen along some wonderful places, such as a Wigwam Village (Cave City), Covered Bridge (Fleming County), Loretta Lynn Homeplace (Van Lear), and Cumberland Falls (Whitley County)...just to name a few.