759. Counting counties

My seven faithful readers know that each year there has been an accounting of the counties in Kentucky visited by Yours Truly during the course of the previous year.  As has been previously explained, since 1979 I have maintained a series of maps of the Commonwealth on which I mark the counties I visit through the course of the year. 

Over the years the number varies and only twice has it to the mountaintop, so to speak, in those years where my feet somehow touched terra firma in all 120 of Kentucky's junior fiefdoms.  That was not the case in 2012 when the number reached just past the 1/3 mark at 41 counties visited.  And, as has been the case in every year except 1979 and 1987, neither Lawrence nor Elliott were among them.

There are the stand-bys - all close to Louisville, Frankfort, and Lexington, with trips made between the three cities on a regular basis.  Fayette was the first county visited in 2012 since I had celebrated New Year's Eve in, as one friend calls it, the Center of the Universe.

The northernmost county visited was technically Boone since it extends more northward than any other county, but the northernmost point in the state I actually visited was in Campbell on a road trip with my dear friend Preston Bates.  We trekked along KY8 heading east out of Newport before returning later than evening and having dinner at a Mexican restaurant on Monmouth Street.

My trip to Charlotte for the 2012 Democratic National Convention afforded the southernmost point, at Exit #11 of I-75 in Williamsburg, Kentucky and Whitley County, just north of the Tennessee line.  I stopped there on the way down, but not on the way back.

To the east was a brief visit into Owsley County while travelling one afternoon with my friend Aaron Jent, the same trip where we walked across the Natural Bridge a few counties over.  That was a fine afternoon ride.

Finally the westernmost place visited was in Hawesville, in Hancock County.  I usually get much further west than this, but illness prevented my usual trip to West Kentucky and Fancy Farm.  On the day before Thanksgiving, determined that Muldraugh wasn't going to be my westernmost city this past year, I drove westward on US60 and other routes to the Hancock County seat where I toured the old Court House and had a conversation with County Judge/Executive Jack McCaslin, a Democrat who first took office in 1999.

That the report.  We'll see if 2013 takes us more places.  So far, sixteen days in, I haven't as yet left the bounds of Jefferson County.