Our 2023 Road Trip #2: Ernest Meets Henry Clay

Jim Varney's tombstone with a large green plant, small Slinky Dog and other items left in tribute.

Somewhere in the multiverse is a timeline where this counted toward our list of Presidential burial sites. Our timeline, not so much.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Over halfway into Day One we were already running behind schedule in Kentucky, but wanted to commit at least one act of sightseeing before heading to our next state. Our not-so-obvious choice: Lexington Cemetery! Longtime MCC readers know we’ve visited the final resting places of over half the Presidents of the United States of America, but on rare occasion we’ll pay respects to other notable personalities as well. Lexington has no Presidents to its credit (though we’ll get to an erstwhile Commander-in-Chief later in this miniseries), but a few well-known names were laid to rest there. One of them was even born after 1900.

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