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It's an early morning for us today, we have a schedule to meet. We have reservations at Mammoth Cave National Park at 2PM. The last tour of the day. After breakfast we get ready and head south on Kentucky's narrow roads. So narrow Gil drives on the yellow lines in the middle to give us a bit of room on the right. There is no room for error, 6 inches too much to the right and we will be in the ditch.
Our first destination is Hodgenville KY - the birthplace and boyhood town of Abraham Lincoln. They have what was thought to be his parent's cabin where he was born encased in a monument. The first Lincoln monument. There are 56 steps leading to it to commemorate his life and there are 16 sets of many things in the monument to celebrate the fact he was the 16th US President. Years later they realized the cabin was not actually his parents, but it is still period specific so they left it. Gil normally takes longer in those historical places so I had to pull him out of there.
The second stop for the day is Mammoth Cave NP, we only have 40 miles to go, so about an hour. We filled up the gas tank last night so we would not have to spend time on that today. However, we do need to eat lunch before we get to the Cave so I feel we need to hurry not to miss our tour. We stop for lunch at El Mazatlán Mexican restaurant in Cave city. Lunch was better than yesterday - it was really good. Right after we are done with lunch I realized we are an hour earlier than I thought since we are now on CST. Now we have plenty of time. We drive to the park and have time for the movie and exhibits before our 2PM tour.
We did the Domes and Dripstones tour which goes in through the "new" entrance of the cave. The cave is a massive 412 feet of passages and this tour only covers a short distance. There are other tours available, but we are going to save those for when we come with Kati. She asked me not to show her pictures of the inside of the cave. After our tour was over we walked to the Historical Natural entrance. That is the picture I am sharing on this post.
Even though we had been to Kentucky before, we had only been to the northern edge of the state near Cincinnati. We also drove through it one year to get to Tennessee, but we had never explored this part of the state. Very pretty rolling hills and butterflies everywhere. They were all over AL Birthplace grounds and the cave. You have to watch where you are walking not to step on them. I loved it.
We are done around 5PM - early enough to move on further south, but we are going to rest this evening after such a late night yesterday and early morning today.
We drove back to Cave City to Cave Country campground. The campgrounds are a bit pricey in this area. This one is less expensive because it does not have any amenities. The sites are all drive through, very level, and it's a clean and nicely maintained park. The competitions is more expensive full amenity parks like Jellystone and KOA. While I enjoy a pool, I have no need to spend the kind of money those chain RV parks charge. If I had kids it would be one thing, but without kids it's not worth the money. We rode our bikes to get some dinner a short distance away. Gil wanted to try brisket and I had fried green tomatoes and a baked potato.
I tried typing this blog on the tablet before falling asleep but I when I tried to save the draft it kicked me out to add the location which I already had done and lost it. Oh well- I called it a night and I am taking care of it early the next morning.
We are going to get ready soon and head to our next stop. Nashville, TN
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