We spent the day/night of May 9th in Bowling Green, Kentucky, taking a break from it all and stayed in a hotel to celebrate our 34th anniversary. J
Next day we checked out and drove to Mammoth Caves National Park where we did the Historic Cave tour. These caves are the longest system in the world with over 400 miles of tunnels/caves with lots of history including natives and being a mining site for saltpeter for the War of 1812 (for gun powder). The tour was two miles of walking underground in the cool caverns, tunnels and “Fat Man’s Misery” which is a narrow pathway carved out by the water. It was 92F outside and 58F underground; a welcome respite from the heat.
We spent that night outside the park in Brownsville as we had arranged to have our mail sent there general delivery. This process has proven very useful for us; our mail service company in South Dakota, America’s Mailbox, receives all our mail and we request it when and where we want it. General Delivery in smaller towns works great. Highly recommend them.
Tonight while parked in the lot of a town park, we got a visitor: the local sheriff came to check us out. We were in a lot that did not say “no overnight parking/camping” but did say “no unattended vehicles after 11pm” – our vehicle was attended: we were in it! Anyway, he asked for ID, checked us out and couldn’t argue the point with us and when we said we’d leave first thing in the morning he seemed good with that. When he was checking our ID he was conversing quite a while on the radio and with another person in another vehicle which we could not make out any signage on so not sure if it was another officer or what. Anyway, we woke up next morning, had brekkie, did a little work on the RV and left around 9:30 to get our mail and carry on.
One stop we tried to make after that was at Fort Knox – turns out you cannot tour the bullion building – imagine that! We went inside the Visitor’s Centre but it’s really for the Fort Knox base, not where they keep the country’s gold so we had no interest in checking out the base itself, and moseyed along.
As Doug had to spend some time doing some work, we headed to a larger city, Louisville. Turns out we were back in the Eastern Time Zone now. Before he had to get on his conference call we stopped by Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby for a boo. The derby was held about ten days ago so it was quite quiet there and we opted not to take the tour as it was rather pricy and we are not into horse racing; huge venue though in not the greatest neighbourhood.
After “work” we wanted to do some walking to so we to the Cherokee Municipal Park and went for a walk. About 15 minutes in the clouds began crying and we took cover at a bench that had an overhang for another 15 minutes listening to the thunder and watching the bolts of lightning. It stopped just as quickly and the temperature and humidity dropped bigtime and it made for a more pleasant night. We also walked a little along Bardstown Blvd. where we saw the mural of the Kentucky Rushmore: Ali, Abe Lincoln, Colonel Sanders and Secretariat!
After a good night’s sleep at the local Lowes, we drove into the city where we walked around the historic, peaceful and beautiful Cave Hill Cemetery. It’s 300 acres large and Colonel Sanders and his wife are buried here. We also took in a little of downtown by strolling in Waterfront Park and checking out the Derby Clock at 4th & Broadway.
Doug had some more work to do so Fran went for a pedicure in New Albany (across the Ohio River from Louisville) with some Mother’s Day certificates she received. We are now heading towards Missouri and the shortest way is across southern Indiana and Illinois so we will make our way westward with not much to see enroute. We plan to do no more than 150 miles a day. We spent that night at a free RV park called Sycamore Springs outside the little town of English. Indiana. This is a free park with RV hook ups and showers (no sani). The land was donated to the town and is maintained by a foundation. It was very well maintained and has lots of land with hiking, creeks, lots of playgrounds and shelters.
