More Kentucky Fun

I like taking trips to give talks. It gets me out of the house and out from under all the things I do every day--off the hamster wheel. I get to meet people, and hang out with folks I'd like to know better.

Barbara Kingsolver's parents, longtime stalwarts of the Kentucky Ornithological Association, came to my talk, and (over my protests), bought a copy of Letters from Eden. I wanted to give them one. They said they'd seen it on Barbara's shelf. I thanked them for making my day, week, year. Having met them, nothing about her natural history literacy surprised me any more. I guess I'm always surprised when a Real Writer shows much n.h.l. It's usually in the natural history basics and details that many Real Writers stumble. I think her biological literacy what makes Barbara Kingsolver's work really shine. It was easy to see where it started. O happy day!

You never know who you'll run into at these things. 

On the field trip the next morning, I found a tiny bluet I'd never seen before--Houstonia pusilla.

Tiny and gracile and much more purple than common bluet, it sprawled along in the moist meadow by the roadside. Here's the whole plant.

A white forget-me not puzzled me a bit. It was growing in a not-very-forget-me-notty place; not wet at all, but it checked out in my mental catalogue as a Myosotis. But then again, maybe it was wild comfrey,
Cynoglossum virginianum, just not feeling like being blue today. I guess in a pinch you could call those leaves light blue. Both are in the Borage family.

Too soon, it was time to beat it for home. I had consulted roadfood.com , the premier road-eats website by my friends Jane and Michael Stern, for possibilities, and learned about Smokey Valley Truck Stop
in Olive Hill, Kentucky. It's near the intersection of I-64 and Route 2 in eastern Kentucky.
No sign graces the restaurant; a wooden sign at the entrance road points you in the right direction, and then you see the cars lined up. My dad taught me to judge a diner by the parking lot.

It being Sunday, there was a large after-church crowd, parents and grandparents and kids and babies. Huge long tables accommodated all. I took a booth, to watch.

There was a big ol' bass and a muskie, I think, mounted against weathered wood and a fish net. Good sign. I hear the catfish special is great, but it wasn't featured that Sunday.

To the right of the big fern, you can see one of the waitresses on her break. She's having a cigarette inside the restaurant, just keeping the place honest to its name, I guess. Definitely not in Cambridge MA any more.

Wanna-be restaurant review coming next! Nobody asked me for a review, but I was pretending to be a roadfood expert. You can do that on your own blog. You can be the Queen of the Road.