Government websites for Lexington are lexingtonky.gov, and while it is logical, I can't help but read it as Lexing Tonky. It's weird. And there's a lot of weird stuff about Lexington, and Kentucky, as a whole.
The Kentucky Bend
This is a small bubble of Kentucky - about 26 square miles - that is disconnected from the rest of the state. It is mostly surrounded by Missouri, with the southern border being Tennessee. There is a road, a few houses, and wetlands. Yes, I drove an hour and a half out of my way to go here and do nothing except squat in the forest to pee and get a tick crawling up my leg.
Stonehenge
Without an HOA, I guess you can do whatever you want on your property and this guy wanted to build a replica of Stonehenge. They have signs up, welcoming you to pull into their private driveway and walk around to enjoy the sculpture.
Transylvania University
Lexington has a university that I'm sure you've never heard of, yet it was founded in 1780, making it one of the oldest in the country. Not only that, but according to Wikipedia, Transylvania University is the largest producer of US statesmen, being the alma mater of
- 2 U.S. vice presidents
- 2 U.S. Supreme Court justices
- 50 U.S. senators
- 101 U.S. representatives
- 36 U.S. governors
- 34 U.S. ambassadors
- the Confederate president
What? This feels very Free Mason-y, cult-ish, Illuminati, freakish.
Deflating Lungs at Waverly Hills
You can take a paranormal tour or even stay overnight in this old tuberculosis sanitorium. The people who give the tours clearly believe in the presence of ghosts, as do lots of other people, but I mostly noticed shadows from headlights of cars pulling into the parking for the later tour, drafts because the whole back side of the building that faced the solarium has no windows, and a "heavy sensation" whenever the sixteen of us or so on my tour crowded into a windowless room, such as the one where they used to deflate patients' lungs. Even as a major skeptic, I thought the tour was really fun, but it did get a little ridiculous when the guide claimed the SWAT team was run out of the death tunnel by ghosts or that this ridiculous, $10 app actually enables ghosts to communicate with us.
These Things
You can spot these things all over the sidewalks of downtown Lexington and they are neither fire hydrants nor parking meters. I've never seen these elsewhere in the world.
The Kentucky Castle
The Kentucky Castle (the failed pet project of someone with too much money and is now a hotel) is in a town called Versailles. No, that's not pronounced Ver-Sigh. It's pronounced Ver-Sales. Kentucky also has a Rome, Athens, Stockholm, London, Paris, Florence, Warsaw, Glasgow, Alexandria, Cairo, Melbourne, Madrid, and even Baghdad. Like settlers picked far away, exciting places they knew they'd never get to visit and decided to make their own version.
But other Kentucky town names include Paw Paw, Whoopie Hill, Pig, Possum Trot, Monkeys Eyebrow, Black Gnat, Mud Lick, and Booger Branch.
