Best

We love bests.

From Top Ten lists to favorite colors to Academy Awards, we want to know who comes out on top. Tens of thousands will stroll through buildings at the state fair this month, admiring the blueribbon work on display.

You�ll find bests all through this Kentucky Living, from fun for kids and adults to serious business planning for bringing the Internet to rural Kentucky.

Start your trek to the top with our Best of Kentucky list. In March we asked readers to rate their favorites in 18 categories. The results are in and counted, from fishing on Kentucky Lake to gazing at Cumberland Falls, from sipping Ale-8 One in Winchester to munching a hamburger at Dovie�s in Tompkinsville. Pick your favorite of the favorites, and enjoy the best of Kentucky.

From burgers to broadband, you�ll find that Kentucky has one of the leading efforts to bring high-speed Internet access to all parts of the state.

A lot of people who don�t live in cities can�t get broadband in their homes because of the difficulties of extending service to sparsely settled parts of the country. Solving those problems brings up a tangle of questions. So we brought together three of the top experts to give us the answers.

One of those answers is ConnectKentucky, a nationally recognized partnership that is bringing Kentucky communities together to get high-speed service to every Kentuckian by 2007.

You can find the excerpts of that discussion about broadband in this issue.

Follow a few Kentuckians who have reached the top in offbeat ways in �Different Sorts of Sports.� That feature tells stories about some top state rodeo stars, regional Kentucky croquet champs, and Sue Snyder of Madisonville, a five-time World Horseshoe Champion in the top class for women.

Kentucky is all over bluegrass, from the plant to inventing the musical style. Among the leaders of the bluegrass tradition is J.D. Crowe. Find out about the fifth annual J.D. Crowe Festival, and a major sponsor that helped make it possible: Touchstone Energy�s Blue Grass Energy Cooperative, of course.