Owensboro, KY
A barbecue joint since the late 1940s, and the Bosley family's since February 1963, when Pappy and Catherine bought the thirty-seat roadside room with the five thousand dollars from selling their own house; the menu still signs off The Bosleys, and the place now seats 350. This is the cathedral of Western Kentucky mutton: sheep slow-smoked over hickory, a style you will not find outside this corner of the state, with burgoo, the thick mutton-and-beef stew from a family recipe, as the deeper tradition. Run the famous buffet and save room for the pies, which descend from Catherine's home kitchen. Named among the nation's top barbecue spots by Food Network, USA Today, and Southern Living. Open daily from 9 am; Sunday closes at 3, so Sunday is strictly a lunch run. Owensboro throws the International Bar-B-Q Festival every May, and this is the town's most famous table.
Owensboro sits on the Ohio River in Western Kentucky and claims two distinct titles: "BBQ Capital of the World" (for its unique mutton barbecue tradition) and "Bluegrass Music Capital" (the genre invented by Owensboro native Bill Monroe). The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum downtown tells the story. The International BBQ Festival each May draws 80,000+ visitors. Owensboro's riverfront has been beautifully redeveloped. Fly the Ohio River for excellent scenic flying.
Bill Monroe — the inventor of bluegrass music — was born in Rosine, Kentucky, just east of Owensboro. The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum downtown tells the genre's story from its 1940s origins to today. Across town, mutton barbecue (slow-smoked sheep, a Western Kentucky regional specialty) reigns at Moonlite, Old Hickory, and other spots. Owensboro's annual International Bar-B-Q Festival each May draws 80,000+ to celebrate burgoo (the traditional regional stew) and mutton. From the air, the Ohio River curves dramatically around the city.
One of the best-preserved Mississippian culture sites in North America. From 1000-1450 AD, a town of 1,000+ people built massive earthen platform mounds along the Ohio River here. The largest mound (Mound A) is 644 feet long and 44 feet high — clearly visible from the air as a geometric rise in the floodplain. The site was a major political and ceremonial center, abandoned 50 years before Columbus arrived. The stockade outline has been partially reconstructed.
Just up the road from the Henderson field is the ground John James Audubon walked when he ran a store here from 1810 to 1819 — and spent more time in the woods drawing birds than minding the counter. The state park named for him, built by the CCC in the 1930s in a storybook French-Norman style, holds a complete set of his Birds of America "double elephant" folio plus hundreds of original prints — the man who painted America's birds life-size, honored where he first studied them. For an app about flying, the first great American birdman is a fitting stop. From above it's a pocket of mature hardwood forest and a small lake against the Ohio River.
Abraham Lincoln lived here from age 7 to 21 (1816-1830). His mother Nancy Hanks Lincoln is buried here. The living historical farm operates as it would have in the 1820s. From the air, look for the memorial building (a semicircular cloister) and the cabin site clearing in the surrounding hardwood forest. Lincoln left Indiana by flatboat down the Ohio River — you can trace his route from the air flying south to the river.