This month’s Day Trippin’ is one of those stops you make when you just want to see what is there. Whether it’s the Gaffney Peach (Just a Water Tower), the world’s largest Bottle of Ketchup (Collinsville, Illinois, just off Route 66), International Towing and Recovery Museum (A personal favorite of mine), or the Anheiser Bush Brewer Tour (Always fun, an end of the day tour with no driving afterward). The Harland Sanders Cafe and Museum is one of those stops. Located about 10 miles off the interstate in downtown Corbin Kentucky, Sander’s Cafe is a great stop for lunch. Normally, we don’t stop at chain restaurants when we are traveling, Roadside cafes and diners tend to offer great local food. Sanders Café met these requirements, sort of. Sanders Café was the original Kentucky Fried Chicken. We saw the sign on the interstate and decided to give it a shot. This was a great side trip. Locating the restaurant and museum is very easy as they have an enormous, towering sign in the parking lot. Once at the restaurant they have a parking lot built where the original motel building was, as well as vintage gas pump that was part of the service station at the motel/restaurant. There were some original Kentucky Fried Chicken signs, (Remember the one with the rotating bucket of chicken on top of the sign), that looked very much like an old Holiday Inn sign with the illuminated arrow. Side note, there is an old KFC sign frame, still in use in Walterboro today, e-mail me if you know where it is located, sgrooms@lowcountry.com. The restaurant has the standard KFC menu, but the dining area was in the original Sanders Café where they had turned the decorated the area with hundreds if not thousands of KFC memorabilia items. One of the more unique areas of the museum was the kitchen display. The original equipment was still in place to fry up some more of the Colonels Favorite Recipe. There is a life size Colonel Sanders statue that you can take a picture with (Definitely not a creepy as the newer KFC Colonel TV ads), We ate near a display of different KFC Buckets through the years. Interestingly enough, I remember most of them. As with most of these roadside attractions, they have a gift shop where you can buy magnets, shirts, hats, and other souvenir items. The original building was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, along with the kitchen, they also have a re-creation of one of the motel rooms. After your trip to the café and turning to the right out of the parking lot, you might want to make a trip to Main Street in Corbin. This traditional downtown has numerous bars, restaurant and antique shop to keep a visitor entertained for a few hours.. The town also has a farmers’ market and a park with another statue of Colonel Sanders to view. Corbin is home for the large CSX Railroad Corbin Yard. This allows great opportunities for railfans to train watch. In its day the rail yard hosted coal trains, staging to make their trips all over the country. This was part of the old Louisville and Northern Railroad, before being acquired by CSX . Corbin. Kentucky is located on I-75. Its really just an overnight stop, but if you give it a few hours, the café, downtown, and train watching might make a great day to relax and unwind on your trip to the Midwest.
