week end on the bike

We left Saturday morning on the motorcycle, our destination was Elizabethtown Kentucky where we were meeting up with several more of our Goldwing friends at a local motel. Each year one of our group, Marvin Henry, along with his new wife Joanne, arranges for all of us to attend a live country show.

We started out stopping for breakfast (what else, right!!) at Digger's Cafe here in Crawfordsville. This was our first visit to this small restaurant. There are only 7 or 8 tables and they were all occupied so Rudee and I sat at the counter and shared our biscuit and gravy w/ hash browns. The food was good and we enjoyed watching the cook work his magic on the flat top grille.

We headed south on US 231 to Spencer and then SR 46 to Bloomington, the hometown of Indiana University, where we picked up SR 37 and turned south once again. We eventually worked our way to SR 135 which has a bridge across the Ohio River into Kentucky. We arrived at the Country Hearth Inn around 2pm. The first thing was too get cooled off. The temps were in the high 80's and we were both beginning to melt! We quickly changed into our swim suits and headed to the outdoor pool for a refreshing swim. AHHHH that felt good. Back in our room we both got dressed as the others begin to arrive and get checked in.

There were 41 of us there and we all just split up for dinner since it would be difficult for a restaurant to handle that big a group on short notice. We went with a group of 11 others to a bar-b-cue place near the motel and enjoyed a meal of ribs, fries and salad.

The show was scheduled to start at 7:30 so we all made our way to the Lincoln Jamboree in Hodgenville Kentucky.

This show has been in existence for almost 55 years and several of the band members have been here for most of that time and they put on a nice show. We have attended several times over the years and have always had a good time. We made our way to our seats and the show started right on time. Besides the "house" band they also have guests appearing. There was a young man who played the banjo and sang bluegrass music, another who sang and played guitar and a young lady who not only sang well but was also very pretty to look at!

The show lasted for almost 3 hours with a short intermission about 1/2 way through. After the intermission more guest performers arrived and they did impersonations of famous country singers. There was Dolly Parton (complete with both her assetts), George Jones, Charlie Pride, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash, Earnest Tubb, Don Williams and Elvis Pressley. We all had a great time and there was a lot of entertainment for our $8.00 admission fee.

When the show was over we all headed back to E-town. Some of the group headed back to the motel but quite a few of us went to Dennys for a late dessert. We were all surprised to see "Charlie Pride" from the show walk in. We invited him over and he surprised us with an impromptu concert right there in the Denny's dining room!

We made it back to our room and into bed shortly after midnight with plans to meet in the lobby for breakfast at 8:00 am.

Sunday morning arrived quick considering our late night Saturday. We had a quick breakfast in the lobby and had several choices of routes to take towards home. We decided to tag along behind Niles and Deb who were heading to Commiski Indiana for a fine dining experience :-) We were joined by 5 other bikes/couples. Niles led us thru the Kentucky countryside and we crossed back over the river into Madison Indiana on US 421. We rode north about 25 miles to Commiski which is a very small Indiana town with a post office, barber shop and one run down restaurant. We have eaten here before and it is more of an experience than a meal. The building itself looks as if it has been several business' during it's lifetime and is a "work in progress" to make it look like a reasonable facsimile of a restaurant. The food was good and the portions were large, except the cheeseburger that Rudee and I shared. It was a dry shriveled, charcoal briquette on a bun. The others all had one of their "specials" and we wished we would have followed suit. The high point of our meal was dessert. We had a huge piece of cheese cake, sugar free of course. Niles and Deb each had lemon meringue pie that was served in a large cereal bowl, they were huge!

Our group shrank after lunch as several opted to jump on the interstate to get home faster. Robinson's, Kadinger's and us all continued on the two lane roads taking a more leisurely ride home. We did make a short stop for Niles to check out a used truck for sale in Indianapolis. I guess the "heavy duty truck bug" has bitten him. The Peterbuilt was behind a fence at a dealers lot but we got close enough to it to whet our appetites to see it up close. Maybe Niles will take us for a ride when he brings it home! I'll keep you posted.