Falls,Train,Museum: Tennessee Line at 2:58pm
After a breakfast of our leftover fried apple pies, we took a quick second look at Cumberland Falls, marveling at how much the river had risen in a week and a half with the rains.  We had picked up a sandwich to have for lunch and headed to our next destination, the Big South Fork Scenic Railway in an old coal mining town, Stearns, Kentucky.

The Kentucky and Tennessee Railway was built between 1902 and 1904 to haul timber and coal, to carry passengers, and to take workers and supplies to the camps along its line.

Now the train is run by the McCreary County Heritage Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization which was created to preserve, protect and interpret the history of one of the few remaining company towns in Kentucky.

We rode about 8 miles into Boone National Forest, dropping six hundred feet in elevation before we arrived at Blue Heron Mine area where we stopped to enjoy the exhibits and the old coal mining artifacts.  We arrived in a driving rain and sat for awhile on the train, enjoying our club sandwich.

On the way to the noon stop, we passed an old mining camp at Barthell, saw Canadian geese on the mill pond, passed through an old tunnel, and road by sheer drops and steep cliffs, black from the seams of coal running through them.  We saw some sumac leaves starting to change color, ferns growing in fissures of rocks, and blooming daisies by the tracks.

After our return trip (clipping on at an average of eleven miles an hour), we walked over to the McCreary County Museum which is housed in the Old Stearns Office Building which was built in 1907.  Stearns was the coal company which basically built and owned the town and the railroad.

The building housed artifacts from the old coal mine, old tools, and old household items from the early part of the twentieth century.  It also had a particularly nice moonshine still on display.

We walked past the business part of town, housed in a large block of wooden buildings and saw the damage from a recent fire which shut the restaurant and several more of the businesses  down.  Workers are already starting with the repairs.


We found our car in the parking lot, set the GPS for home and headed south, crossing the state line into Tennessee at 2:58 p.m . We visited and/or transited 30 counties and drove over 1400 miles in the state. We feel that we have a much better understanding and appreciation of Kentucky than we did two weeks ago.

Now, it is time to start considering what state to choose for next year's trip!