Current Location: Ashland / Huntington West KOA, Argillite, Kentucky

We spent most of the day just driving around the area. Malcolm grew up in this area of northeastern Kentucky, so we spent quite a bit of time just looking around and seeing how things have changed over time. After having one of our LP tanks filled here at the campground, we headed down to Russell (Malcolm’s hometown) to mail off some postcards so they’d have a Russell postmark on them. We drove on through Russell to check the progress of the new bridge that will connect over to Ohio (to replace the aging bridge just downstream).

Our campsite. Park is fairly new, so not many trees.

Russell, KY post office.

From there, we drove through Ashland, Kentucky and on through Catlettsburg, then crossed the river to Kenova, West Virginia. There, we drove out to a little park on the point of West Virginia where you can see three states (West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio). This is where the Ohio River comes by and the Big Sandy River comes up from the south to join it. Malcolm used to work close to the park for Ashland Oil (now Marathon) cutting grass and painting barge decks.

View downstream. Ohio River to the right. Standing in West Virginia, Kentucky off in the distance to the left, Ohio on the right.

Where the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers intersect. West Virginia in the foreground, Kentucky to the left, Ohio to the right.

From there, we drove on through Huntington, West Virginia and on out to I-64. We traveled east a couple exits and went to the Huntington Mall, where we had lunch and walked around for a while. After the mall, we hopped on I-64 and headed back to Ashland. We went to Kroger to get some groceries, then stopped at Crisp’s Dairy Treat to get ice cream treats. Then we drove on back to the trailer to drop off groceries.

Crisp’s Dairy Treat

Open for 52 years now.

After grocery drop off, we drove back over to Flatwoods, Kentucky and had dinner at Giovanni’s Pizza, one of Malcolm’s favorite places to eat back in his high school days. After that, we drove over to the cemetary where Malcolm’s mother and father are buried and wandered around looking at the grave markers and picking out other people that Malcolm knew.

We then took a drive through the two neighborhoods where Malcolm used to live growing up and checked them out. From there, back to the campground again. We walked down the hill part way to check out the other half of the campground, then back to the trailer. We decided to drive down in the truck (the two halves of the campground are actually fairly far away from each other) to check it out. Pretty neat.

Now we’re just relaxing in the trailer, using the park’s free wi-fi to download updates and such. Tomorrow morning, we pack up to head to Lexington for a couple days. We’re planning on staying at the Kentucky Horse Park campground.