Getting the flavor of...A Kentucky Fried detour, and more

A Kentucky Fried detour

Not far from Kentucky’s Cumberland Falls lies hallowed ground for fried-chicken lovers, said William Grimes in The New York Times. The town of Corbin will never be a major tourist draw, but the Harland Sanders Museum and Café (corbinkytourism.com/sanderskfc.htm) makes it a “modest must” for passers-through. Before Sanders donned a white suit and became the Colonel, he ran a “humble, seat-of-the-pants operation” in Corbin. Even today, the café evokes a time when traveling America’s highways was “a high-risk proposition with marvelous discoveries and ghastly disappointments at every turn.” Visitors can order a bucket of chicken to munch on in the old dining room while gazing at the barrel where Sanders stored his mix of 11 herbs and spices. Few can resist the photo ops offered by two all-white sculptures of the Colonel—or by the display that depicts the founder “holding a bucket of chicken and radiating joy.”

The real Mayberry

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Mayberry isn’t just a fictional place, said Martha Waggoner in the Associated Press. The small-town setting of TV’s The Andy Griffith Show was inspired by Mount Airy, N.C., a throwback burg that remains home to the Andy Griffith Museum and is celebrating the 52nd edition of its annual Mayberry Days festival Sept. 27–30. Tourism was up this summer following the death in July of Mount Airy’s hometown hero, but visitors have never stopped rolling in for “a glimpse of small-town life and the simpler times portrayed on the show.” They can stay at a bed-and-breakfast located in the actor’s childhood home, tour the city in a squad car like the one Sheriff Andy drove on the show, or “satisfy a sweet tooth” at Opie’s Candy Store, named after Ron Howard’s character. Mount Airy isn’t exactly frozen in time, but it’s close enough. “Because of Andy and our tourism,” says the museum’s director, “we’ve got a Main Street with no empty stores.”