WV to TN: Random Photos

39°f/about 4°C, occasional drizzle and overcas.            Not the prettiest day. Most of the snow has already melted. 

The wedding venue,  a pretty home with these log walls enclosed inside. They were part of the original house.

A photo booth in our hotel, which had some pretty cool retro decor, including a book of Andy Warhol's art on the table in the huge lobby.

The Corvette Museum, or, as my grandson called it, the Male Midlife Crisis Museum.

So many odd roadside attractions in this region!

Like this castle in Versaille, Kentucky, in racehorse country.

I always wondered about the castle. We used to pass it when visiting our son when he was stationed at Fort Campbell, and at other times when traveling near Lexington. It was empty for years, and I think this might be the first time I have seen it completed and in use. It has an odd, some might say cursed or at least uncomfortable history. This is from Wikipedia: "Construction on the castle was started by real estate developer Rex Martin and his wife Caroline Bogaert Martin in 1969, after they had returned from a trip to Germany and were inspired by the architecture and many famous buildings they had seen in Europe.^[3] The finished project was to have seven bedrooms, fifteen bathrooms, a fountain in the driveway, and a tennis court. In 1975, the Martins divorced and left the castle unfinished. Over the years, it became a popular oddity and roadside photo-op for tourists. Rex Martin listed it for sale in 1988, but died in 2003 without selling it. In 2003 the so-called "Martin Castle" was sold for 1.8 million dollars to Thomas R. Post, a lawyer from Miami who graduated from University of Kentucky, and the name was changed to "The Castle Post". It had been for sale for many years at a price rumored to be more than 3 million dollars, and there had been talks that it would be turned into a medieval-themed restaurant or a museum.

On May 10, 2004, after months of renovations, an ugly mishap caused newly installed woodwork and wiring to catch fire in the main building. Post, who was at his home in Miami at the time, had already spent months renovating it but vowed to rebuild. Approximately twice the castle's original cost went towards the reconstruction project.

Reconstruction was completed in Fall 2008. New additions include twelve luxury suites, a library, game room, music room, dining hall, ball room, swimming pool, formal garden, basketball court, bar, and tennis court. It is used as a tourist inn,^[4] fund raisers, weddings, special events, and corporate functions. It has sixteen bedrooms, four of which are in the outside turrets.

In November 2010, the property was listed for sale at $30,000,000.^[1] Post said he would continue to operate it as an inn while it was listed.^[1] It was sold in 2017.^[5]

I saw that a night in the castle costs about $271, and there is a really nice restaurant there as well.

Less elegant, but pretty cool is this water tower's message, "Water Grows Ky". With so much granite and limestone in the soil there, no wonder they can grow that beautiful bluegrass! The region between Lexington and Nashville seems to be riddled with caves, many of them tourist attractions, like the famous Mammoth Cave. I think that if someone wanted to build a home there, they might want to do some geotechnical drilling and testing, because we saw evidence in the fields we passed of many sinkholes. You can kind of see what I mean in this photo; all those little dips filled with trees, and the pond, are probably sinkholes.

Snowy, but not snow-covered roads on the way home.

Then finally ---

and back down the last hill before our driveway. Ahhhh...always good to go, but even better to get home.