The best dishes and trips always seem to be born out of accidents. My journey up to Chicago was no different. St. Louis was more of an accidental destination, a stopover point to recharge and rest up for the final push to Chicago. An accidental journey often begins with the search for things that you probably never would seek out on a regular basis. As the drive grew tiresome and  by accident, I had the car detour off of the road to Springfield, Missouri to meet a fork in the road.

Angling up a three story building and measuring 35 feet tall, what claims to be the world’s largest fork stands for its next meal, the cheesy tourist who detoured for miles off of the road just to take a picture with it. Perched in front of an advertising agency, the world’s largest fork sticks into the ground with conviction. A sign on fork etiquette cautions you to enjoy its hilarity but to stay on the concrete. No forking around here.

When one stands at the feet of such a large utensil, you can’t help but hear your stomach grumble. I knew St. Louis was a few hours away and one of its signature dishes was on my future fork. Toasted ravioli, or what some know as fried ravioli, is one of those wondrous dishes born out of an accident. It was not intended and yet it overwhelms the palette with a mouthful of stomach plopping greatness. Toasted ravioli in St. Louis is something the traveler must search for even if they meet a few forks in the road along the way. This not so accidental journey for toasted ravioli lead me to Charlie Gitto’s on the Hill.

It is no secret that toasted ravioli was born out of the southwest St. Louis neighborhood referred to as the Hill in the 1940s. Charlie Gitto’s on the Hill proudly claims to be the birthplace, the original site of the ravioli accident. As the story goes, Charlie Gitto’s stands on the site of what was once Angelo’s Oldani Pasta House. A non-Italian chef at the restaurant accidentally dropped ravioli in hot oil for an order, mistaking the oil for boiling water. The kitchen staff gobbled up his mistake and toasted ravioli soon made its way on to the main menu.

Like any good story about accidental food greatness, there are conflicting origin stories. Another Italian restaurant, Mamma’s on the Hill maintains that toasted ravioli began on its grounds instead. Mamma’s even has witnesses to the event. Mickey Garagiola, brother to Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Garagiola reportedly sat at the bar the night toasted ravioli was invented and sampled the first mistake. Whichever story you believe, it quickly doesn’t matter once you order up a plate. I decided under limited toasted ravioli sampling time that I must go with the supposed original at Charlie Gitto’s on the Hill.

The landmark of Italian dining in St. Louis serves up a toasted ravioli that is crispy and crunchy yet brimming with meat and sprinkled like a snowstorm with Parmesan cheese. Put most simply on the menu as “the original”, my waiter quickly tells me that yes this is the original. He seems to be defending a sensitive spot, an honor that no one on these grounds would question. I imagine at Mamma’s it is a different toasted ravioli story.  Regardless of who invented these fried pillows of goodness, I’m happy that I took the fork in the road to St. Louis to sample its one and only accidental toasted ravioli. Now to find a store to purchase the next size up in pants…

Have you had toasted ravioli in St. Louis?

Almost like a hallway linking classrooms, students make their way ever so casually to class by way of the oldest restored block of residences in the city of Denver. They layout on the grassy thoroughfare to take in the sun in between classes amidst homes that were present long before Colorado was even declared a state. It is an unusual scene, one where the youth of college and university life coexists with the city’s earliest days. Within structures hailing from 1872 to 1906, ordinary collegiate business is conducted from transfer services to honors programs. Not a spot often sought out by anyone other than those looking to finish their degree, this is Denver back in time and in its present all in one.

I spend the beginning of my week going back to class. I’m making an attempt to discover pieces of my native city that I never considered before as my far away travels remain on hold. I’m also mingling with college students along Ninth Street Historic Park, a practice that both makes me feel old and young at the same time, much like this area of the city can. Ninth Street Historic Park so secretly perches in the heart of Auraria Campus. Auraria Campus encompasses three educational institutions, the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State College of Denver and the University of Colorado at Denver. Before Auraria Campus became a campus, it began as a settlement laid out in October of 1858 by the Russel brothers from Georgia. Their town of Auraria would suggest why some brothers came all the way from Georgia to the Wild West. The name of Auraria translated as “gold region”.

Auraria would link up to another early pioneer town, perhaps one better known today as Denver. The town was originally comprised of people from Germany and Ireland. After the turn of the century, Jewish and Hispanic families settled into Auraria. Traces of this past neighborhood and town were threatened in 1969. Plans were made to turn the area into the Auraria Campus. That plan would clear 127 acres including the double-sided block of Ninth Street. History would be cleared so that students could read about what once was and study up on the past to understand the present. Luckily Historic Denver wouldn’t allow this to happen. The organization raised the funds to preserve fourteen structures along Ninth Street. Their act of salvation restored the structures so that they could become a part of the campus in 1977.

I take the self-guided walking tour of the oldest of Denver’s restored blocks. At each restored Victorian home, there is a weathered plaque detailing who lived within the walls, what they did, in essence their story. I make out a few of these etchings to learn about the architecture of Ninth Street. In general, the block tells of middle class housing in the late 19^th century. Two homes hail from 1872, making them territorial. They were here before Colorado was. Colorado became a state in 1876. The Centennial House is one of those old timers, often believed to be the oldest brick residence left standing in Denver.

I watch as students casually flap the door open of the old Groussman Store. Today it is a chain sandwich shop but back when Auraria was a golden community, it was a corner grocery story. It tells the viewer what commercial architecture in Denver looked like. In fact, it is one of the few examples of turn of the century commercial architecture left in this town.

At the end or beginning of Ninth Street Park depending on how you look at it, there is a home that stands out. The Knight House was often called the most perfectly proportional and tastefully embellished Victorian house in Denver. A bookkeeper for a flourmill called it home back then. While not every home on this historic block is as visually striking, they all tell of the lives of candy makers, carpenters, railroad engineers and dentists who made this a neighborhood. It is no wonder that Ninth Street Historic Park has made it on to the National Register of Historic Places.

I make one last loop of this park, past students in tie-dye with tired eyes. Without their presence, in many ways, you could call this Denver’s time capsule, an avenue for seeing what working class Colorado once looked like. And yet without the students’ presence, in many ways, this park wouldn’t exist. Perhaps some other plan would have come along at another time and historic preservation wouldn’t have been considered. The contrast of old and new is all the more present and powerful with the lounging of students across history. I step out of this time capsule and back into Denver’s present. Such a trip often costs a pretty penny, but not on the corner of Ninth Street.

Have you ever been to Ninth Street Historic Park? Is their a preserved part of your city similar to it, one that was saved from the wrecking ball?

Travel is often all about chasing the famous. Sites that we have seen our whole lives on book pages are suddenly real. They are tangible and no longer images on a page. Then again, travel is often all about just chasing the journey, to feel something that we wouldn’t have felt staying in the comforts of home. The journey is usually unknown to the traveler. They can’t foresee it or expect it. Finding this balance of both awe-inspiring, famous sites and the mere journey is not always obtainable. Sometimes we get one and not the other. We set out to see Paris and the journey there ends up being the story. I set out for a piece of Kentucky for perhaps the famous but I ended up with a journey of time and humility instead.

In grade school, I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address. Arguably one of the greatest speeches in American history, I loved the dramatic pauses, the simplicity of its words and the lack of words. A good speech moves you to the point where your knees bend, your mouth quivers and your emotions can’t be tamed. I like to think of travel in this regard. The best trips should move you to the point where your knees bend, your mouth quivers and your emotions can’t and will not be tamed. Such a simple yet powerful speech came from Abraham Lincoln, the 16^th president of the United States. Considered one of the greatest presidents, I went to see his humble beginnings in Kentucky, to see Lincoln’s old Kentucky home. 

I envisioned those famous sketches of a log cabin. Honest Abe was born in a simple and small log cabin on February 12, 1809  just outside of Hodgenville, Kentucky . Called the Sinking Spring Farm after the spring that the Lincolns used, I make the trek up 56 steps to the spot where the cabin used to stand.

Today, a reconstructed version lords over within a grand neoclassical monument. The original is long gone, but I can still sense humility here. Travel can show you that no matter where you come from, your home, your final chapter can tell a very different tale. Where and how we travel through the world is not limited to where we came from in the end. It can influence our journey yet it never dictates it.

I make the journey 10 miles up the road to visit where Lincoln spent a little more time, the first home that he remembered. Abraham Lincoln’s Boyhood Home at Knob Creek served as the Lincoln residence from 1811 to 1816. The family lived on 30 acres of 228 acres at Knob Creek.

Deserted with not a park ranger in sight, I admire a field where a future President frolicked. Lincoln said his earliest recollection took place at Knob Creek. It was the first time he witnessed slavery, a practice that he would famously set out to abolish in the United States. Knob Creek is also home to the creek where Lincoln infamously almost drowned. If it weren’t for a childhood friend who saved him, this site would probably be meaningless.

A car pulls over to snap a quick shot of yet another Lincoln cabin, this one also a reconstruction of the family home. They pause for not more than one single moment, one click of the camera and then they are off. They have seen the famous site and must be on their way. I pause and ponder, standing on the grounds of a president that almost wasn’t and a cause that he had to see firsthand. It is both the fame of this space that makes it grand and yet also the journey that took place here. From humble beginnings and homes, Lincoln’s impact on the world truly traveled. His ideals on equality are still being tested today. I traveled down to his old Kentucky home to experience a buckling of the knees, a mouth quiver and emotions that I wouldn’t want to tame. And that is what travel should be, from one man’s humble home to a traveler’s journey.

Have you ever been to Lincoln’s birthplace and boyhood home in Kentucky? Is it important for you to seek out travels that combine famous sites and the journey?

I gaze up on a baseball bat measuring 120 feet tall and weighing around 68,000 pounds. Its proportions, to say the least, are monumental. This replica Babe Ruth baseball bat leans ever so nonchalantly against the Louisville Slugger Museum, where the famous Louisville Slugger has been made since 1884. It doesn’t surprise me that a city with baseball bats to the moon and products fit for Major Leaguers is truly in a league of its own. In fact, there isn’t just one way to say Louisville. It is a tongue twister and a back of the throat gurgle. Is it pronounced Luhvul, Loouhvul or Looeyville? Just as there is more than one way to pronounce this city on the southeastern bank of the Ohio River, there is also more than way to define it.

Named for King Louis XVI of France due to his help during the Revolutionary War, Louisville was founded in 1778. Crumbling buildings whizz past my window view. It is clear this city’s story is forever unraveling itself. Louisville was long thought of for its strategic location at the Falls of the Ohio, functioning as a major shipping center in the days of Westward Expansion and a Union base during the Civil War. It is no wonder that at this confluence of water, land and the West, Louisville has produced a compilation of stars, from Muhammad Ali, Diane Sawyer, Hunter S. Thompson to a U.S. president or two.

After a tour through the Louisville Slugger plant with mini bat in hand, I head for Churchill Downs, sadly without a funny hat on my head. I had long pictured Churchill Downs, home to the world’s most famous thoroughbred horserace, the Kentucky Derby, plopped down in fields of Kentucky bluegrass. I’m surprised to find the site of the most exciting two minutes in sports right smack in the city. It will only be a few months time before aristocrats descend upon Churchill Downs with their funny hats to watch the winner get crowned in 554 roses. They will do it, all while consuming 100,000 mint juleps. I find Louisville is all about tradition, about doing things a certain way, as it has been at Churchill Downs since 1875.

And while the rich and famous await heading to Louisville in May, I am more interested in seeing how a simple man built up a fried chicken empire. I head to Cave Hill Cemetery, home to notable Louisville locals throughout history. Dedicated in 1848, the cemetery acts as the final resting place of Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. The Colonel didn’t start his business fresh out of school or even at middle age. Rather he began franchising his pressure-cooked fried chicken when most people his age where retiring to nursing homes. As it reads on his grave, the founder of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Empire looks out in a bronze bust form for eternity, proof that it’s never too late to start an empire no matter your age.

I check into the Brown Hotel, another Louisville icon. The historic hotel is one where you could sit in its lobby and never fully appreciate all of its details, from the hand painted, coffered ceiling to all of the mahogany furnishings. Built in 1923 by J. Graham Brown, the hotel would become a magnet for the famous and prominent throughout the 1920s to the 1950s. Guests have included Harry Truman, Joan Crawford, Muhammad Ali and Elizabeth Taylor just to name a few. The classic English Renaissance architecture was also on display for the film Elizabethtown starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst.

I can’t resist a hotel that has such a story to tell like the Brown Hotel. I can hear those stories whispering throughout the lobby, hallways and even in the old timey elevator. All of this chatter has me working up an appetite for the hotel’s famous sandwich, the Hot Brown. The opened faced sandwich features roasted turkey breast drenched in Mornay sauces and Pecorino-Romano cheese. It is then baked until it reaches that appropriate golden brown color. For good measure, bacon and tomatoes are added at the end. The Hot Brown was born to feed the ballroom dancers at the Brown in the 1920s. They need something hearty after a night of dancing and probably drinking so Chef Fred Schmidt came with this creation. While you can order a Hot Brown all over Louisville, the original and arguably the best form of this monster sandwich is dished out at the Brown Hotel.

With a Hot Brown in my stomach, moving is next to impossible. Good thing my room is just a short walk to the elevator away. First and foremost, Louisville has to remain ingrained in my memory forever with a proposal of marriage in the Brown Hotel’s Crystal Ballroom. I say yes to both the proposal and to Louisville, a city so multifaceted and intriguing that I would return even if I didn’t have sentimental reasons and bourbon drawing me to the banks of the Ohio River.

Have you been to Louisville?

I begin my trip to Nashville not with a lesson in country music, but a lesson in one of this Tennessee city’s other traditions, pancakes. Opened in 1961, the Pancake Pantry has become a Nashville staple, a pancake stronghold of the South. You wouldn’t know it by the down-to-earth atmosphere of the place. Not overly stuffy or pretentious about pancakes, I order up a stack of blueberry pancakes and fill up on Nashville in perhaps its sweetest form. Music City might be the ultimate pilgrimage for country music fans but with one bite of these pancakes, it could easily be Flapjack City. 

Being in Nashville, country music is never far away. The tourist in town generally heads to the Country Music Hall of Fame for their dose of country music education. On my visit, this grand museum is closed, forcing me post-pancake to head for the next best form of country music education at the Ryman Auditorium. Where bluegrass was supposedly born and often referred to as the Mother Church of Country Music, stepping into the Ryman does in fact feel more like going into a church, a sacred space for fringe and twang.

With a history dating back to the 1880s, like most places of such an age, the Ryman was saved from the wrecking ball and declared a National Historic Landmark. From 1904 to 1943, the hallowed wooden pews of the Ryman hosted all manner of events, from operas to boxing matches. It wasn’t until Lulu C. Naff took over management for the venue that the Ryman would become one of the South’s best performances halls. The Ryman would welcome the popular live radio show, the Grand Ole Opry and perhaps it was never the same. I sit observing a stage that has seen Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. While a tour allows you to get up on strange and play the part of Dolly, I resist. I wouldn’t want to monkey around in such large, country music shoes. 

It’s time to eat again in Nashville. The meat-and-three, a restaurant where the diner selects one meat and three side dishes, appears to be a Music City right of passage. I head for Arnold’s, a meat-and-three specialist. I grab a tray and line up with no doubt record executives on their lunch breaks, mothers steering children on the straight and narrow and maybe even a few country music stars.

Again, Nashville isn’t pretentious or uninviting. Mashed potatoes and green beans are plopped down next to hunks of fried chicken. It can’t be good for you, but when in Nashville, you seemingly don’t worry about this sort of thing.

I close out my time with Nashville, as it should be, listening to the sounds of its most hopeful. Located just beyond the downtown area, I find myself at a strip mall. The Bluebird Café has established a reputation for being an acoustic music gold mine, where many of the stars of today were just regular old strummers on Monday night Open Mic Night yesterday.

With just a handful of tables and a strict no talking code, I observe the good, the bad and the earnest on this Monday night. Some of the acts are what you would expect, a blonde 18 year old with her parents, hoping to be the next Taylor Swift. And then again, some of those strumming singers belting out notes in a darkly lit room induce a few chills of Nashville.

Have you been to Nashville?

It’s roughly just after noon as I take a sip of bourbon. I don’t have a problem. I can wait until 5 o’clock somewhere but when in Kentucky, bourbon consumption and education starts early. I am following the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Needless to say this isn’t a path that follows the straight and narrow. It is a trail past honest Abe’s log cabins and over rolling Kentucky bluegrass. In between the history is a culture for bourbon, a path that never did run smooth but a course of bourbon finishes that might be.

Formed in 1999, the Kentucky Bourbon Trail is the work of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association. Several of Kentucky’s distillers wanted to create a path of bourbon distilleries for travelers to follow in order to discover the art and science of crafting bourbon. With seven distilleries on the trail, sadly I only have time to stop at two.

Whenever I hear someone remark on how the U.S. lacks a true culture and identity, I now think of the bourbon trail in Kentucky. The first settlers to the area began converting corn and other grains into whiskey. One of Kentucky’s three original counties was called Bourbon County. Farmers from Bourbon would ship their whiskey down to New Orleans in accidentally charred oak barrels. Those long trips in charred barrels would age the whiskey into something entirely different. The new alcoholic spirit was named after the county stamped across those barrels, Bourbon County. By 1964, the caramel colored drink would be declared by Congress as a distinctive product of the USA. Today, bourbon is often referred to as America’s official native spirit.

With no official beginning or ending, I dive into Kentucky’s sea of bourbon distilleries with a visit to Four Roses. One of the main benefits to visiting Four Roses in the dead of winter is that production is in full swing. The Kentucky heat of the summer halts production and keeps the visitors out of boiling distilleries. However in the heart of February, the business of bourbon is in its distilling stages.

Built in 1910, Four Roses looks nothing like a Kentucky dream. The distillery boasts a Spanish mission style, one that has landed Four Roses on the National Register of Historic Places. Its name comes from founder Paul Jones Jr. When he proposed to his Southern belle, she said her answer would be yes if she showed up to a ball with a corsage of roses. She arrived with four roses on her wrist and Jones never forgot her affirmation.

I begin my accidentally private tour of the distillery with a film on bourbon’s history and a talk from my guide. I learn that Four Roses was virtually absent from the US market until 2002. Now it is climbing back into the bourbon scene of Kentucky, garnering awards and acclaim. My guide of just about 5 foot tall leads me through the distilling process. The barrels of bourbon are fermenting below, bottles of bourbon in the making.

Not knowing much about bourbon, I quickly learn just what makes bourbon, bourbon and not whiskey. In order for the liquor to be classified as true bourbon, it must be aged in new, charred oak barrels. The charred barrels lend a caramelized layer of wood that gives bourbon its amber color. Bourbon must be distilled with at least 51% corn. It can’t have any artificial colorings. Like most of the attitudes that I encountered in Kentucky, what you see is truly what you get with bourbon. To this day, bourbon remains the only alcohol distinctive to the United States. More than 95% of the world’s bourbon is distilled and aged right here in Kentucky.

At the end of every tour on the bourbon trail, visitors get to taste what they have seen in the making. In front of me sits several glasses of bourbon. 5 o’clock is still in the distant future as I sip on my first taste of Kentucky bourbon in bourbon country. The bourbon slides down my throat, leaving a long and lasting finish, one that warms from the winds of winter howling outside. I head out for Louisville with perhaps an added bourbon spring in my step. Once five o’clock has passed and when in Kentucky, I order up a bourbon drenched old fashioned and appreciate America’s spirit with a little buzz. 

Have you been on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail?

I can hear peanut shells snapping and the bellowed out drawl of the umpire. I listen for the sound of the pitch and the crack of the bat. I can hear all of the elements for America’s pastime. Baseball is after all a game for the senses. My ears are burning for baseball and I’m not even in a stadium. I stand in the Louisville Slugger Museum in downtown Louisville, Kentucky surrounded by game winners, and losers, in the making.  

Suzy, game loser. Babe Ruth, game winner

To some, the Louisville Slugger is merely a type of baseball bat. To others like me, it is the game of baseball. In Major League baseball, the Louisville Slugger bat is used by over 60% of all players. Composed of either northern white ash or maple, these baseball bats are the tools for the greatest of games.

“I don’t know how you did it folks, but you picked one of the best days to tour the factory,” my tour guide states. The Louisville Slugger Museum is not just a museum space, but also a working factory where the famous bat is produced. On the particular day that I grabbed a ticket, the factory just so happened to be in full production. Since 6 in the morning, countless artists and machines were turning logs into baseball bats for spring training. 

Baseball bats are the limit here.

With no major league baseball team, Kentucky seems like an unlikely state to house the number one baseball bat producer of Major League Baseball. However Louisville can thank Bud Hillerich for starting the tradition. The Hillerich family of German immigrants came to Louisville and started a woodworking shop. The son, Bud, was an amateur baseball player. He would craft bats for his own use and for his teammates. Word quickly got out about his work.  

Legend or reality, Bud is thought to have created the first Louisville Slugger for a professional ballplayer in 1884. While his father didn’t approve of the new focus of the wood-shop, the family business quickly morphed into the business of making baseball bats. Part of the appeal came as amateur baseball players could purchase the bat model of their favorite big leaguer. The Louisville Slugger brand is still all in the family, operated by Bud’s great grandson.

I take a tour of the museum and the factory, beginning with the chance to hold bats that were actually used by some of the game’s great hitters including Mickey Mantle and Cal Ripken Jr. Clearly my form is right in line with some of these greats. 

Before entering the factory, I take in the experience of receiving a 90mph fastball from Cole Hamels. Needless to say I jumped every time.  I also notice a number of notable bats including Babe Ruth’s Louisville Slugger. He carved notches in the bat for every homerun that he hit during the record setting 60-homerun season in 1927. You can almost hear the choir of baseball angels singing about this slugger.  

After basking in the bats and lifelike sculptures of some of baseball’s past and present stars, I am motioned into the factory for my tour. This is the reason why I came, to see the bats that can create unending emotion in fans, players and coaches, come to fruition. I watch a bat demonstration, showing how Bud used to make the bats by hand in about 30 minutes. Now they can churn out bats in a matter of seconds. 

On white boards in front of the machines turning logs into baseball bats, a player’s name might be listed. Today, right before my eyes, the bats of Ben Revere from the Phillies are being made. Suddenly this game isn’t so far away. I’m not disconnected from it. I’m surrounded by the bare bones that make those players succeed.

Once we exit the factory after observing all of the steps of the process from your basic log to imprinting the famous Louisville Slugger text onto the bat, I experience the site’s batting cages and giant art. Within the museum, a giant baseball glove, handcrafted from Kentucky limestone and weighing in at 17 tons plops down on the floor. And this isn’t even the museum’s grandest sculpture.

Outside the doors, you can’t miss the museum for its world’s biggest bat. Composed of steel, the bat leans against the building, all 68,000 pounds of it. Measuring 120 feet tall, it is the exact scale replica of Babe Ruth’s 34-inch Louisville Slugger. You can’t help but try to hug the thing, if only you could get your arms around the masterpiece.

After a visit to the Louisville Slugger Museum with my free souvenir bat in hand, I now know that the scents and sounds of baseball aren’t merely of Cracker Jack popping and the ball meeting the glove. Baseball in Kentucky sounds and smells much like I imagine a woodshop does. Freshly cut wood and confetti like chips are baseball in their simplest and most pure forms. They are the prospects of homeruns and game winners. And perhaps no other place in this sport lends so much promise and hope.

Have you been to the Louisville Slugger Museum?

 Practicalities: Adult tickets to the museum and factory cost $11. You can’t take photographs in the factory but the museum exhibits are fair game.