Several days ago, when Cory Ramsey left Bowling Green to wander westward through several counties and then back home again in one day, he hadn’t planned to discover an old country store at tiny Pee Dee in Christian County.
And that was kind of the point – to land in a little place with an interesting name, a quirky story or a pretty view that’s so far off the beaten path it’s hardly known by anyone who doesn’t live nearby.
In Pee Dee, Ramsey stopped and took a photograph of the store with a weathered sign that still identifies the place as “Bessie D. McCraw Grocery. Pee Dee, KY.” The store shut down years ago, but ripe tomatoes were being sold on the front porch the day Ramsey found it.
His trip to Pee Dee – and then across the lakes to Aurora for a cheeseburger, onion rings and a peanut butter shake at Belew’s Dairy Bar – was one of the early jaunts in his goal to visit each of Kentucky’s 120 counties.
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Ramsey, a welder for a manufacturing plant in Bowling Green, graduated from Fulton County High School in 1999 and from Western Kentucky University in 2004. He’s been exploring Kentucky’s tiniest places for the better part of his life.
About 10 years ago, a two-month layoff gave him the inspiration to begin hiking in state parks, and that led to a writing gig as the Adventure Tourism blogger for Kentucky.
By 2013, Ramsey had established Map Dot Kentucky to give his explorations a trademark and purpose.
On his own, and later with a team of explorers, Ramsey made it to every county in Kentucky and built a following of 19,000 Facebook followers. They’ve had widespread media exposure, and Kentucky Educational Television featured their travels and mission to highlight rural Kentucky.
Ramsey’s goal for another trot across Kentucky will be different this time. Mostly he’ll travel alone or with his wife, Monica, on the one day a week he’s off from work. The pace will be slower, and maybe more relaxed, but he’ll still take thousands along for a virtual ride.
“So here we go. Again,” Ramsey wrote in an Aug. 4 post for his travel blog, “Road Trip Reflections.”
“This quest for 120 won’t happen as fast as the ’13 Tour did. It will take a few years this time and put us on into 2021 or 2022 still doing the Map Dot Thing.”
With an established following on Facebook, it’s not usual for Ramsey to meet up with Map Dot fans when he mentions he’ll be in a particular county or tiny town.
Although Ramsey now lives in Bowling Green, he understands what it means to be from a place that’s seemingly just a dot on the map. He grew up in Hickman on the Mississippi River at the far western edge of Kentucky. Sometimes he’ll tell people he was from “around Paducah” – even though it’s an hour’s drive from his hometown – because it is a place people know.
That’s an experience Ramsey knows he shares with many people in Kentucky’s smallest towns. They live in places that are not widely known.
His Facebook followers are mostly older than Ramsey. They are people who watch “Andy Griffith” reruns and invite him to lunch when they hear he’ll be passing through their county.
“I just get a kick out of it,” Ramsey said.
A year ago, Ramsey thought Map Dot Kentucky had run its course. He’d been to every county at least twice. He said he’d covered everything he needed to see on Kentucky’s back roads.
Then he came to his senses and got back on the road to explore places like Pee Dee.
For people like Ramsey, the road calls that way.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
