We visited three local points of interest today… We started at Mountain Home Place…
This is a working farm; all the buildings here were moved onto this property from adjacent land that was taken when the Paintsville Lake State Park lake was built. The buildings date from 1850 to 1900.
Of course, we start in the Gift Shoppe… They sell all hand-made products produced by local craftsmen…
The old men caravaners enjoyed sitting on the front porch…
We strolled the property and saw the vintage buildings; we also enjoyed their animals…
I enjoyed what appeared to be really tentative foundations…
We saw the local church…
And the local one-room school house, in use until 1958…
A typical cabin…
Interesting ladder to the attic lofts…
Then we moved on to lunch in Paintsville…
I enjoyed a local delicacy… Fried Bologna Sammich…
The next local landmark we toured was the Mayo United Methodist Church; the church was donated in 1904 by Mr. Mayo, who made his fortune in coal mining. (We are only about 50 miles from the West Virginia border.)
The stained glass windows are remarkable…
The organ was relatively small (1,000 pipes, 18 stops, two manuals), but high quality, and still in good condition; it still uses the original mechanical connections to operate the pipes. The manual pumps were replaced by electric fan chambers in 1914 when electricity arrived at the church…
Our own caravaner played for us, and we returned the favor by singing a few hymns…
Next door was Mr. Mayo’s house… The Mayos only lived here for a few years; Mr. Mayo died suddenly, and Mrs. Mayo moved to Tennessee to be with her family. The house (45 rooms) is now a Catholic School…
And finally we visited the Highway 23 Museum…
It was so-named because of the many country music stars who were born along Highway 23…
The only country music stars I had known anything about were Loretta Lynn and her sister Crystal Gail. We also saw a video of an interview with Loretta Lynn about the making of the movie, “The Coal Miner’s Daughter”… We will visit her childhood home in nearby Butcher Hollow tomorrow, and re-watch the movie in a few days…
The museum is small, but it was enjoyed by those who followed country music… We returned to the Villa, and walked along the lake again…
Happy Hours ensued, and an enjoyable time was had by all…
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