On Thursday evening the ASP Harlan Center staff and the ASP Jonestown, Virginia staff coordinated a picnic at Martin’s Fork Lake, just outside of Harlan, Kentucky. Each team was encouraged to invite the family it was serving to join approximately 220 ASP volunteers and staff for food and fun at an amazingly beautiful mountain lake in southeastern Kentucky.
Martin’s Fork Lake was created in 1978 when the US Army Corps of Engineers built two large dams to flood several valleys of small rivers that supply the Cumberland River. The lake they created offers important fresh water resources to southeastern Kentucky and badly needed tourism revenue.
During our winding 30-minute drive to the picnic, many of us wondered what kind of lake we would find so high up in the mountains. When arrived at the lake, just beneath the large northern dam, we were amazed by the beauty of all that water in the midst of these picturesque mountains.
When you added the local families that joined us, there were well over 250 people. We all had a chance to meet the personalities we had heard about from other team members or to introduce our local families to our friends from the Bound Brook area. This broader view of the local community gave us a chance to learn more about work, home, and recreational life in this part of Appalachia.
We all had a chance to try and capture the beauty of this place with our cameras as we wandered down the hill from our picnic pavilion to the beach area. There, a number of the locals went for a swim as others played beach volleyball and Frisbee.
The party broke up around 9:15 pm, with a good amount of daylight still in the sky. We traveled back to Evarts for a good night’s rest before our last day, but with a slightly 
better feel for the natural magnificence and recreational richness that make our families love this part of the world. 
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