We left after work Monday evening, grabbed some quick airport bar food for dinner and hopped on a flight with a layover in Ohio. We landed in Lexington, KY some time around 10:30. It took nearly an hour to get our car and with more than an hour's drive to Berea -- the folk arts and crafts capital of Kentucky (hey, don't take my word for it, it says so right here on their Web site), we were in for a late night.
On a side note, this is actually a very cute little town and is home to Berea College. For those of you who haven't heard of Berea College, it's a tuition-free school only for qualified kids living in Appalachia. Is that great, or what? Kids who otherwise would probably never have a shot at going to college can get a quality education FREE.
Anyway, we arrived at the good ol' Super 8 in Berea some time after midnight. Our boss left a note on one of our doors that said "welcome to the Bates motel" ... as in Norman Bates -- from Psycho. And yes, it was that bad. Now normally Merkle tends to put us up in pretty nice places when we travel for work. However, they told us to really go the economy route on this one since it was a volunteer work thing.
Our account guy took this to mean "Stay at the Super 8". It was the kind of place where you sleep in ALL your clothes ... down to the socks ... so as not to expose any of your skin to the sheets in the bed. And showering might make you dirtier (plus if you don't dry off carefully the sandpaper towels might rip your skin clean off). We checked in at midnight and out at 7 a.m. the next morning, spending our second night at a Fairfield Inn just down the street. For $20 more, it was fabulous. Fairfield's are owned by Marriott, so they're always pretty nice. Trust me, if you're ever in Berea, KY and need a hotel, spend the extra 20 bucks. You get what you pay for.
We had to be at the worksite by 9 and it was nearly two hours away. The good thing is we were all to happy to get the heck out of that Super 8, so we were up and off in no time. We arrived at the site shortly before 9 and here's some of the pictures I took before we got started.
I don't know if the pictures do this much justice, but it was an absolute wreck. I'm amazed it was standing at all.
This is the back of the house -- the section we tackled.
Coming tomorrow ... watch Angie hang siding and learn about the exciting trip home!
3 comments:
Welcome back......blogger-wise and otherwise.
so what's great is that I have these three wooden candlestick holders that I got from my grandmother that are from berea college! I thought they just looked cool (I mean - they are really simple, but look cool) and I asked her if I could have them and they are carved or wood burned in on the bottom - Berea College - Berea KY!
That's cool! We drove through the campus -- it's very pretty. Didn't get a chance to do any tourist stuff though. One of these days I'm going to tack on a day and do a tour of the local arts so I can bring back some goodies. There's some talented folks out there. I may tack on two days so I can do a bourbon tour too! :)
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