Our visit to Kentucky was interesting. I learned that I do love the country, like I always said I did, but I need to still be pretty close to town. By “close to town,” I mean that I need to be able to have a decent enough cell signal to make calls, check emails, and use my personal hotspot to get some work done. By “close to town,” I mean that I wouldn’t mind being able to hit up a chain grocery store, and not just a Mom & Pop shop twenty miles down the road. By “close to town,” I mean that I don’t want to drive more than an hour to find a Target or an Olive Garden.
We stayed at Nolin Lake State Park, which is about a half-hour from Mammoth Cave National Park, in South Central Kentucky. Our goal was to visit Mammoth Cave and any other caves we fancied seeing in the area. It’s cave country in this region of Kentucky.
That little bit of blue on the map near Bee Spring is where we were – Nolin Lake. We had to drive 30 minutes to get to a Dollar General, and we were excited to see it! I sat in their parking lot a time or two to get a strong enough signal to do some work. We drove to another town (not on this map) one day just to use their library wifi for me to post final grades. We were also thrilled to find they had a Wal-Mart. I’ve never in my life been thrilled to stumble upon a Wal-Mart. So, when I say we were in the sticks, I do mean it. It was kind of nice being removed from the world (no FaceBook, no real TV – three channels). We sat around fires, rode bikes, played games, and did puzzles. But, it was a little stressful at the beginning of the week, when final grades were due. Once I got that all knocked out outside of the Dollar General and then at the library in Leitchfield, KY, it was pretty pleasant.
Mammoth Cave was really fascinating. It is the longest known cave system in the world, at 405 miles of passageways, though only a small portion of that can be toured by the public. We got up to speed on the history of the cave system at the Visitor’s Center, and other than having the worst Wifi I have had to deal with, the Visitor’s Center is very nice. They have some cool hands-on things for the kids, which counted as home school in my book, because they learned about how caves form before we took our tour.
We went on a ranger-led tour that lasted just over two hours. The girls began this experience excited and saying things like, “It’s like we’re explorers!” but they ended it with some complaints about tired legs and extreme hunger. Nevertheless, caves are cool, and we got some good pictures.
On a separate day, we went back to Mammoth Cave National Park to go down a short trail to see the historic cave entrance. Many tours now leave from newer entrances, but the original entrance remains, and several tours begin there. Those tours were closed during this season, as they are doing some work on the passageway in that area of the cave. We were still able to walk down to the entrance and check it out.
I’ll be honest. We pushed our luck a little bit with the cave touring (the girls were over caves and had sort of adopted the attitude that if “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”); still, we decided to head on over to the town of Horse Cave and see one more. This one is a story I’d seen on some travel show, and I wasn’t leaving Kentucky without visiting the cave whose entrance is just below Main Street of the tiny town. Hidden River Cave has an interesting history.
This cave was the source of drinking water and hydroelectricity for the town of Horse Cave at one time. The river running through it was home to blind cave fish, crayfish, and other creatures, until pollution from sewage killed everything off. Once it became so polluted and people actually became ill from the water, it was closed and turned into a dump site for anything and everything. As our tour guide told us, the cave was nothing more than an open sewer for about 50 years. Having grown up in the town, she remembers the stench that came from it. She said that when she told people she was from Horse Cave, they’d frown and hold their noses, as if she stunk. It was known that that was the town that reeked.
In 1989, according to our guide, a new regional sewage treatment system was implemented and the problem was resolved. The American Cave Conservation Association set up shop in the town in 1987, and the cave is now pristine, once again home to the fish and crayfish that lived their before.
After our tour, we enjoyed taking a walk through the American Cave Museum, which pays tribute to those who lost their lives caving, promotes conservation, and educates the public on many of the caves in America.
Figuring we had covered the cave stuff, we spent the rest of our time in Southern Kentucky hanging out at the campground and driving some backroads (mostly to and from that Dollar General Store). Here are some of the sights we saw along the way.
During down town, I discovered a love of hammock chillin’, and Ray did a lot of outdoor cooking. The girls asked to have their training wheels removed from their bikes. Rayne is now riding, steering, turning, and stopping by herself. Jayden is still working on her skills, but she’ll get there.
Now we are in the Southern tip of Illinois at Ferne Clyffe State Park. We will camp here for a couple of days, and then move on to Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. After that, we are going to Branson to get more of our country on!
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