Taking The Breaks: Susan takes time out in the Breaks Interstate park, 'the Grand Canyon of the south'. Photograph: Susan Greenwood

Oh Kentucky! Old men in dungarees tap dancing to the South Mountain Bluegrass Boys. Families munching corn chips, heads rocking, bodies bopping to the infectious tale of the teenage queen. Years of treading the Crooked Road, they know the steps and they know the tune.

Oh Kentucky! Gateway to the Appalachians, home of The Breaks. They suffocate with their history and their height. Dense mountains as hard to cross today as they were for Boone over 200 years ago. And the pioneering spirit holds true. Did time pass over these ragged rocks and leave just a whisper?

Oh Kentucky! Land of buried sunshine and bearer of its scars. Scratched and torn as the precious coal, the killer coal, is pulled from the rock and driven by speeding trucks to fill the furnaces of America's industry. Mining faces greet you everywhere, but don't wash your overalls in our laundry.

Oh Kentucky! Vote Allen, Vote Jarrell, vote Billy Ray. This is, after all, America so vote vote vote! But don't come on this property, it's private property. Keep out! No trespassers, no parking and beware of the dog. The dogs. Vicious, violent blood seekers they scream for your ankles, legs, whatever they can get hold of, while unsympathetic owners demand you don't spray them with your only defence - pepper.

Oh Kentucky! Powerful religiosity. Jesus saves, Jesus lives, Jesus wos 'ere scrawled on bathroom walls. But watch for the drug dealers, the dopeheads and smack heads who appear when Jesus turns his back. Don't flash your money, lock up your stuff, don't travel through here on your own ma'am. Be scared. Poverty makes people do evil things.

Oh Kentucky! Leering men and suspicious women lurk behind the blacked out windows of Chevys, Buicks and Fords as they roar past. Abandoned cars hide in bushes, driveways and fields. Wooden houses being sucked into the earth, discarded, their contents raided, left for dead. The smouldering remains of a house behind which grubby trailers double for accommodation, yards full of twisted metal and children's toys.

Oh Kentucky! Home of the unbridled spirit. What else can you show me?

PS for the trail name I'm thinking Green Hornet, Supersonic or Mojave Green ... although I feel about as old as Methuselah right now!