Somerset

Somerset is the county seat of Pulaski County and the main gateway to Lake Cumberland, a fifty-thousand-acre reservoir formed when the Wolf Creek Dam impounded the Cumberland River in the 1950s, and it has built an entire local economy around getting people onto that water. Houseboat culture here is serious business — some of the rental fleets run boats over eighty feet long with hot tubs and slides bolted to the top deck — and on a summer Friday the marinas fill with families provisioning for a week afloat, coolers and inflatables stacked on every dock.

Lake Cumberland

We didn’t rent a houseboat, just a pontoon for an afternoon, and it was enough to understand the appeal — the lake’s water is unusually clear for a reservoir this size, turning a deep aquamarine in the coves away from the main channel, with sandstone bluffs rising sheer out of the water in places. We anchored in a quiet cove and swam off the boat for an hour, Lia declaring it the closest thing to the Mediterranean she’d found inland in America, minus the salt.

Downtown Somerset

Back on land, downtown Somerset centers on a courthouse square that’s been steadily filling back in with restaurants and shops after a rougher stretch in the 1990s and 2000s, plus a public art scene that’s turned utility boxes and alley walls into small murals across several blocks. We ate dinner on a restaurant patio a block off the square, the evening still warm enough that half the town seemed to be out walking, the lake crowd trickling back in from the water for the night.

Getting There

The closest regional airport is Lake Cumberland Regional (SME) with very limited service; most visitors fly into Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport (LEX), about ninety minutes north via the Hal Rogers Parkway. A car is essential for Somerset and absolutely necessary for reaching the marinas scattered around Lake Cumberland’s shoreline.