Cumberland Gap, It's A Devil Of A Gap

Besides waterfalls, I'm a sucker for factory tours, especially the type of factory tour where they have conveyor belts and tons of automatic machines. Imagine my joy when I found a factory tour just five miles off my route. Mayfield Dairy was my intended target. I faithfully followed Google maps which seems to consistently enjoy taking me down back road shortcuts. As a consequence, I came into the dairy from the back way and missed where the buses and RVs were supposed to park. I ended up parking the RV among a bunch of Mayfield tractor trailers. 

They had these big Jersey cows everyplace - I guess you could call it a whole herd of Jerseys

After paying my five dollars for the tour, getting my ticket for a free ice cream and watching a movie, we all had to don bright red hairnets. The guys on the tour had to put on beard nets which were pretty funny. We were not allowed to take any pictures on the tour and if we removed our hairnets we would be ejected from the tour.

Miko in the red hairnet - she looks thrilled, doesn't she?

Mayfield Dairy is a huge operation – they not only bottle milk, they make ice cream and yogurt.  They bottle thousands of gallons of milk a day.  The tour starts with machines that would make the plastic bottles. They would make 4 half gallon bottles every 8 seconds. Mayfield bottles are yellow bottles. They say that when milk that is in those clear plastic bottles it loses 25% of their nutritional value within two hours of being on a grocery shelf because of UV rays whereas milk in these yellow bottles only lose 5% of their nutritional value. The bottles arrange themselves on a conveyor belt and then go into these big circular wheels where they are filled and the bottle caps are screwed on. Fascinating to watch.  Back onto conveyor belts off to be packaged. They don't use oil or grease to keep all these machines running, they use soapy water. It keeps everything nice and slick while also cleaning the machines all day long. Of course the floor of the plant was ankle deep in soap sud runoff in some places. The tour was great – tons of different products were being packaged and the machinery was just whirring along without human intervention. Actually, I suppose it was sort of creepy in a way – this is our future – we don't need no stinkin' people anymore, Machines Rule!!!

As we ended the tour, the guide told us about all the different flavors of ice cream that we could sample with our little blue ticket after the tour. I had mentally picked out the flavor I was going for (white chocolate raspberry) when a voice came over the tour guide's walkie talkie saying that whoever had the big RV pulling a car needed to move the rig immediately. As a consequence, there was no ice cream for me this day.

I moved up to the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park. I stayed in the National Park campground. I suppose I should look at maps a little bit better when I travel but the park is right in that corner where Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia come together. Imagine my surprise when I found that I would be sleeping in Virginia instead of Kentucky where I thought I was going. The campground had just opened for the season on the day I arrived and I was Camper #3 in the campground.

Had to go under a mountain

The Cumberland Gap is a narrow pass through the Cumberland Mountains. Its significance is that it was instrumental in opening up the west. During it's active years about 300,000 people traveled through the Gap to start new lives in Kentucky and Tennessee and points west. While Thomas Walker is the first white man to document the gap, it was used earlier by Cherokee and Shawnee tribes when they would raid each other's encampments. Daniel Boone, though, is the one who really opened the way – broadening the trail making it easier for settlers to move west. He actually lost a couple of sons to First Nation attacks as he himself brought his family west.

Miko and I hiked to the Cumberland Gap. You hike up a gentle rise and then there is a flat spot which they were calling the Gap that was only about 300 feet long. Then the path started down. So, unless I'm mistaken – the Cumberland Gap (which I always thought was this huge westward ho road) was just a short little jaunt.

Cumberland Gap right here

Early in the 20th century, most rural roads were not much better than when Daniel Boone traveled on them.  The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture  sponsored the building of smooth crushed-rock roads.  The object was to convince voters of the convenience and value of building better roads.  These roads were called Object Lesson roads.

This is one of them thar Object Lesson Roads.  I suppose it was in a bit better shape 100 years ago

We drove up a winding switchback road to Pinnacle Peak

We also hiked up Tri-Peak mountain which is where the three states all come together.  I had so much fun making Miko walk from Tennessee to Virginia to Kentucky all within a couple of seconds that I forgot to take a picture.  

We met a man hiking up the mountain when we were on our way down who was a maintenance man at the local high school.  He told me that he was a jack of all trades and that he had an office with his name on the door.  Underneath his name on the door were the letters TBC.  He told me that stands for Toilet Bowl Cleaner.  Everybody gets a title these days I guess.