Next Stop--Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

I'm behind on blogging. I usually write while we're driving, but some of the roads, especially in Kentucky and Indiana are quite bumpy making typing on the laptop a little difficult, and we've stayed busy outside of riding in the truck. 

We left Victoria Campground and before we got out of the state, we noticed the temperature was unusually high on one of the trailer tires. We monitor the pressure and temp with a TMS, Tire Monitoring System, that came with our camper. It wasn't flat or losing air, but high temp can mean a tire is about to separate. We learned our lesson with the motorhome that tire troubles can ruin a few months of traveling. We called the Mavis Tires in Cartersville and verified they had the tire we needed, then we stopped there to buy a new tire. Better safe than sorry for $90. The motorhome stayed in the shop for four months after a devastating blowout tore out the wiring harness and put a hole in the floor. Ed had to change it himself since it wouldn't fit inside their bays, but the trailer is so much easier to deal with than those monstrous motorhome tires we had before. We were quickly back on the road again with a tire that ran a normal temp.

We stayed one night at Cedars of Lebanon State Park, a very nice location for catching up with good friends. Tyler's girlfriend, Sophie, lives about 30 minutes south of where we stayed. She drove up for a nice long visit. Sophie and Tyler were our last visitors on What If just before we sold her. The next morning, we met cruising friends, Jim and Michelle, for a long breakfast at a nearby restaurant. We last saw then in the Bahamas. It was great to catch up with everyone before we got back on the road again.

Our next stop was Mammoth Cave National Park, a stop we've wanted to make for years. 

Unfortunately, the weather was pretty awful much of the five days we were there, but that didn't matter when we visited the caves. We took the Discovery Tour first to just see the very start of the historic entrance. 

Called "Mammoth" Cave for a reason. 

Those are bored out logs used to pipe water down over 200 years ago for mining saltpeter. The cool air has preserved the original logs.

 

The logs up close. Very interesting.

Back into the warmer air.

The next day, we took the Park Ranger led Historic Tour deeper into the cave showing us two miles of the over 400 miles of cave system there. We descended much deeper into the cave and had to climb about 500 steps on our return. The 50 something degree temp made the hiking and climbing much easier.

Heading deeper into the cave.

Graffiti from more than 100 years ago.

Very deep crevices

We had to bend down for much of the hike in the lower sections.

Making our way through "Fat Man's Misery", a very narrow passage.

The Ranger is pointing out flood markers. A river runs through the cave and flooded inside over his head last year.

The tape on the pole shows flood levels in years past.

The "Fire Tower" stairs to took us up from our lowest part visited near the underground river. 

Many of my photos did not turn out well since it was so dark, but it was amazing tour. So glad we took it.

The yellow shows a side cut of where we hiked--over 200 feet underground.

We hike down the short trail from the cave entrance to the river then back to the camper as the rains were coming. 

After a rain storm, we headed out on the bicycles to ride the Mammoth Cave Rail Trail, a trail that follows the railroad path that brought visitors to Mammoth Cave from the late 19th Century until the early 20th Century. We rode the 9 mile trail almost to Park City and then back to the campground. 

Nice, easy trail, although a bit hilly.

We decided to turn around here before Park City.

We had numerous storms overnight and into the next day, and once during the night blew limbs down all around us. Our kayaking trip on the Green River was canceled due to all the rain and some flooding. We hung inside until the next afternoon when more rain was predicted but seemed to be holding off. We took a chance of getting wet and started off on the Green River Bluff hike from the campground then detoured off on another hike taking us back to the campground--4.5 miles in all. We just barely beat the rains with just enough time left to put away our bikes and outside gear preparing for our travels the next day.

We walked over where Fat Man's Misery was below us.

The Green River, not so green with all the runoff from flooding.

Several holes into the caves below us.

Not as large as the Sequoia's out west, but some very large trees in this park.

An engine and car from the old railroad. 

We were a bit disappointed that we missed kayaking and hiking more trails, but we squeezed in what we could between rain storms and enjoyed this park immensely. The bikes and our feet took us everywhere we wanted to go leaving the truck to rest for a few days. Time to move further north,.