Pallets and Hydrangeas

We recently found 2 pallets laying along the shoreline at the lake.  How the heck would pallets get in the lake anyway?  Whatever....  Chablis and I made two trips and dragged them by hand to the lake house.  Believe me when I tell you those things were heavy.   We grabbed some leftover paint and this is what we did with one of them.  It is now propped up in front of the lake house.  I transplanted some flowers and once they fill in around it, I think it's going to look really nice.

And how about these beautiful hydrangeas?  My next door neighbor brought over a huge bouquet of them for us to enjoy.  I'm now letting them dry out.  Don't you just love dried flowers?

Apple Valley Hillbilly Garden and Toyland

Apple Valley Hillbilly Garden and Toyland is one of those attractions that you stumble upon and say "Why didn't I ever hear about this place before?"  Tucked alongside Kentucky's Highway 68 in Calvert City, Apple Valley reminds me of the old fashioned roadside attractions of the 50's and 60's. 

The land here was originally purchased in 1928 by Oral Wallace and consisted of an apple orchard.  Enterprising Oral dubbed his property Apple Valley Orchard and began to sell apples to passersby.  Farmers used his place as a stop-over and by 1931 Oral had built a small store that sold apple cider, which was rumored to include hard cider and moonshine.   Before long he was selling lye soap, serving food and offering barber shop services as well.  By 1939 the store became a Gulf gas station, which continued until 1964. 

The years rolled by and in 2005 Oral's grandson, Keith Holt, inherited the property.  Keith is a former actor, clown and comedian who also happened to have an extensive toy collection.  He returned to Apple Valley with a dream to turn his 3500 item collection into a toy museum reality.  Instead his dream blossomed into a roadside attraction that includes a toy museum, folk art, and a local history museum. 

We were greeted at the parking lot by a bright orange waving piece of art!

Shortly after we climbed from the car, Keith appeared and proceeded to give us a 2 hour guided tour of the property.  His background in entertainment makes him the perfect tour guide.  Don't expect a museum docent, dressed in a suit or period clothing.  Instead, Keith ambled up, long hair flowing, dressed in shorts, bare feet and a broad smile. 

He happily escorted us around the folk art area, delighting us with his quick wit.  All the attractions are created personally by Keith, and each has a story and a pun to accompany it.  Check out some of the interesting and creative displays.....

My favorite part of the tour was the original store/gas station.  Keith has stuffed it to the rafters with local historical items, memorabilia, and treasures from his days as an actor....

I could have easily spent the entire morning inside the store alone.  It was stacked floor to ceiling, with a wide variety of pop cans and bottles, grocery products from days gone by, posters, musical instruments, trains, newspaper clippings, books, magazines and much more. 

Keith knew the stories and history behind everything and he spun tale after tale as he pointed out things on display. 

 Oral's photo and his violin....

Check out these original store signs......

 

 

Keith is a self taught artist and painted all the pictures on the property....

 

Our final stop on the tour was the toy museum.  Again, the building was crammed with thousands of toys, games, lunch boxes and trains which Keith turned on so they ran around the room....

 

It was fun to pick out the older toys and games that I remembered from my childhood.  I was amazed at the wide variety of stuff he had in there.

 

2 hours flew by and we totally enjoyed ourselves.  Keith was a gracious and amusing tour guide who certainly knew his local history and had no shortage of stories to share about his days as an actor.  For more information on the Apple Valley Hillbilly Garden and Toyland, go visit the website which has an extensive background and history of the property.  Here's a link to an article written in the local newspaper.  Be sure to visit their Facebook page as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and urge you to stop by if you're in the area.  Kids in particular will find the place fascinating and adults will enjoy the corny puns and the local history.   Be sure to allow at least 2 hours to walk around the property and visit both buildings.   They are open year round from 8:00 am until dusk.  It's hard to believe, but it's free as well.  They do accept donations to help fund future art projects but at no time was a donation ever solicited. 

I'd like to thank Keith for spending so much time with us and sharing his history and toys with us.

Geocaches With the Creep Factor

Sometimes it's fun to do some geocaches with a little bit of creepy factor. You know, something kind of scary, supernatural, haunted or creepy.   I did a post before about the Scary Roads geocache that can only be done at night.  You can go back and read about that fun one here.

A couple weeks ago we did a cache with a nice cache page story.  Sometimes its hard to decide if a cache story is true or not, and that's part of the fun.

The cache in question is called The Severed Story of Alastair Paine and we dragged my mom and dad along to go find this cache.  It's located out in the middle of nowhere and the house in the story is actually the crumbling foundation of an old house, and it's all overgrown with weeds and vegetation.  We had to really pick our way thru the brush to get to the old house.

Once there, we really had to dig and sort thru a lot of old house debris until dad finally found the cache.  The mosquitoes had a field day with us.

Afterwards we made our way out and we didn't see or hear any ghosts that day.  I don't know if I was disappointed or not.

How about you?  Got any ghost stories to share?

Geocaching in Racine, Wisconsin

We were recently geocaching in Racine, Wisconsin and we happened to stop at one of their welcome centers to find a geocache and use the facilities. It was a beautiful Welcome Center, very clean and well staffed.

Inside they had the nicest Golden Books display.  Do you remember Golden Books from when you were a kid?  I sure do.  They were some of the first books I had and I treasured every one of them.

We also did a bunch of geocaches that day, so let me show you some of the highlights.

This cache was attached to a string and snaked down the hole in this tree....

Can you spot the geocache here??

There is a very nicely hidden geocache here but I can't tell you where it is because I don't want to spoil it.  But trust me, it's a good one!

We really had to root around for the next one, but we did find it....

The next one was hidden in the front yard of a geocachers property.  It's a good thing my dad is tall and we found a poking stick nearby.  It was a really cute container...

Sometimes you have to approach a geocache with great care.  I was really nervous about grabbing this next one.....

Check out the wasp nest within 1 ft. of the cache.  I'm allergic to stings so Louie was screaming at me from across the road to get away from this one!  Sometimes I don't listen very well.

I really like finding unusual cache containers, and this one was certainly different!

Here's mom and dad signing us in on the final cache of the day.  Any day caching is a good day!