This is the beginning of the Country Music Highway. US 23 runs north to south through Johnson County, and the state named it for the extraordinary number of singers who came from the counties along it, Loretta Lynn first among them. She was born in Butcher Hollow, just outside Van Lear, a few miles from Paintsville, the coal miner's daughter of her famous song, and her childhood cabin still stands up the hollow. Chris Stapleton grew up nearby too, in Staffordsville, which tells you this corner of Kentucky is still producing voices.
Paintsville itself is a county seat of around four thousand people in the valley of Paintsville Creek, close to the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River. It is a busy little town by local standards, with a hospital, shops, chain restaurants out on the highway and several gas stations, so it is a sound place to eat, rest and refuel before the long mountain stretches. The name is often explained by painted marks or images that early settlers found on trees and rocks here, left by Native Americans, though the story is more tradition than record.
West of town, Paintsville Lake State Park sits on a reservoir with steep wooded shores and sandstone cliffs. Beside it, the Mountain HomePlace is a re-created farm community from the nineteenth century, with log buildings moved from across the region, a working blacksmith and a one-room school. It is a good stop if you want to understand how people lived in these hills before the coal boom.
The riding is varied. US 23 is a four-lane highway, quick but dull, useful for linking sections. The good stuff is on the state roads that branch off it: Route 40 west toward the lake, Route 172 and the small lanes up the hollows, where the road narrows to a strip of tarmac between creek and cliff. Expect patched surfaces, occasional coal dust and debris after storms, and drivers who know every corner and take them fast. Pikeville, the larger town to the south, has every service, but you rarely need to go that far.