Cave City, Kentucky

From Douglas Lake we set off in a westerly direction with the intention of traveling to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. To start our day, we drove west on I-40 to Lebanon, TN where we took US 231 north into Kentucky. The drive west from Knoxville was beautiful and took us down and out of the mountains. US 231 was a nice winding road that took us north to US31E where we turned off to get to I-65 and Cave City, Kentucky. Funny thing about this area of Kentucky---we had cell phone coverage, but no data so I couldn't check on the campground we wanted to visit. Bob wanted to feed Sol so we stopped near a fast food restaurant that had Wi-Fi and I was able to get the phone number of the campground to check for availability. The campground had one full hook-up site left, but only 30 amp electric. That was fine with us, so after a trip to the gas station, we drove the 2.5 miles to Singing Hills RV Park and Campground which is a member of Passport America. We had the site for 2 nights. After we got set up, it was time to relax, but wait, we couldn't fully get set because our kitchen slide wouldn't extend all the way! It would only go out about 3 inches and then stop. Out came the owner's manuals and we found the light in one of the bays that indicated a motor wasn't working properly. Bob messaged Winnebago to let them know they needed to add slide repair to our list of to-do's once we arrive in Forest City, Iowa. We can live comfortably in Sol without extending the kitchen slide so it is no big deal to wait for the repair.

The next morning Bob and I got an early start for our visit to Mammoth Cave National Park. Just inside the park boundary is a pond with a boardwalk and interpretive signs. Of course, there were also a couple of geocaches along the boardwalk so we stopped and found the caches.

Our next stop was the cave area. Since we have visited the cave on a previous trip (pre-blog), we opted to walk some of the trails around the park, hopefully before the rain arrived in the area. The first trail took us to the historic entrance to the cave which was the only visitor entrance until the 1920s.  Standing at the top of the stairs, we could feel the cool air coming out of the entrance.

As we neared the entrance, the air became even cooler. It actually felt good because it was a hot, humid day with thunderstorms in the forecast.

 The historic entrance is closed for renovations, but you can still see the interior of the cave through a barred window.

 Bob enjoyed the cool air as we retraced our steps to the top of the trail.

As we finished our hike and headed back to the car, we had to get a picture of the national park sign. We did find out that since our last visit in 1981, the boat tour has been discontinued to protect the unique creatures in Echo River.

We took the road less traveled to get back to our camp site. The route took us past an old church and some farmlands where we found a couple of geocaches. We got back to Sol just as the rain started. We spent the rest of the afternoon plotting our route to our next destination.