Out to dinner with Jen, Cam, Madison and Masey at Famous Dave’s BBQ. We had to agree the BBQ here was pretty darn tasty. We planned our trip to the                   Louisville Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular for the next evening. Definitely go when it’s dark.

Winding through Louisville we finally get to Iroquois Park. Lots of people have come to see the pumpkins. This pumpkin was huge, but wait till you see what comes next.

The theme for this years spectacular is America the Beautiful! Over 5,000 pumpkins are here. Above is some of the amazing carved pumpkins we saw.

These are some of the States. This event goes for 3 weekends. Pumpkins will be replaced as they start to fall apart.

All around the featured pumpkins. There were jack-o-lanterns everywhere. Up the trees,  in the bushes,  every pumpkin seem to have a different expression.

Just a few more. We walked looking at pumpkins for 2 hours🎃! What a fun evening that was

Today is Fall Festival Day in New Washington and Bethlehem. “New Wash” as the locals call it is a small little town. Everyone knows everyone here.

The best part of the day was spending it with Debbie Franklin. We met her at lunch and she mentioned she was going to Bethlehem. Jennifer and Cam said, “Shoot, just come along with us.”  She grew up out in the country. When we passed the farm where she grew up, she talked  of memories of walking down the long lane to the road to catch the school bus…no matter what the weather. She also talked about harvesting the tobacco her family raised.I was full of questions and she had the answers. Tobacco is a very hands on crop. They would cut it,  tie it and hang it in the barns, which looked like they were missing boards however that was to let the air flow through and let the leaves cure.

Back to Jen and Cam’s home. They live on quite a bit of land with hills and creek beds and lots and lots of trees. Cam took me in the gator to get a picture of Jerry and Fred up in the hayloft of the little barn.  On top of the barn is a weather vane Cam and Masey resurrected. They made a goose whirligig for the top. On the side of the barn is a “barn quilt”  Cam makes them. As we drove around we saw quite a few he has made. I thought one would be cool on the side of our garage?!

After a trip to the barn what else do you do in a gator? Head for the woods and down into the creek. All the while Frankie the Boxer his nipping at the wheels and swimming in the creek.

Monday and the kids can’t play with us anymore. They are back to work and school. We decided to walk the bridge. Along the way to the bridge there were bike and sculptures.

The bridge is called the Big Four Bridge. The name came from Cleveland, Cincinnati,  Chicago, St.Louis Railway. Construction started in 1888. Completed in 1895 it had some disasters with portions of it collapsing. Of all the histories I have read this bridge had some troubles. By 1969 the bridge became known as the Bridge to Nowhere. Now a multi use. Walking across the bridge you could tell the it’s is happy with its new job of getting people out an about.

where we are camping there is several acres with a pond to let the pups run. Today Doogie decided to swim in one end of the pond where all the sludge of the creek backs up. He was one muddy puppy.

Tomorrow we pick up Phil (Jim’s Vietnam buddy) and Robin Shope. We traveling to THE ARK  outside of Williamstown, KY.