Mammoth Cave & surrounding area

We pulled out of Old Mill CG, Cookeville TN about 7:50 this morning, I’m not sure why so early, it just seemed like the thing to do.

I’m sure glad that the roads were not heavily traveled!! After leaving the park, backtracking the way we came in, first we had to drive a couple of miles on a super small (narrow) and curvy, with a few hills thrown in just to make it interesting.

When I say narrow, I mean the tires of the coach would fit within the strips with an inch or 2 to spare on the few straight spots, curves were another story, the speed limit was 55, lets just say I didn’t need to worry about getting a speeding ticket. Next up was a few miles of a little bit wider 2 lane, I managed to get above 30 on most of that stretch of road.

We made it out and I only caused 1 car to be late for work, they were super, hanging WAY back, I don’t think they were in any rush and they followed us all the way to the expressway.

The rest of the 172 Mile drive were uneventful, we crossed into KY and pulled into our spot at Singing Hills CG, Cave City KY for the next 4 nights, maybe longer, depends on the forecast.

At Old Mill phone bars were non existence here we have a 3 full bars, but the internet one minuet it’s lighting fast and the next it hangs up, pages won’t load, movie quits, most frustrating.

3/16/2018.

We did our first ever tour of Mammoth Cave, they have mapped over 400 miles of the cave and it’s possible that it’s twice that.

Today we took the Historical tour, around 2 miles and took about 2 hours. It was interesting but it was a much larger crowed than I like, probably somewhere between 40-50 on the tour.  It was also a fast paced tour, we didn’t get to do a lot of stopping, sightseeing, on this tour.

Also because of the group size we missed most of the commentary, but did hang back and talk to the rear guide, both was very knowledgeable and easy to talk to. No flash pictures, it was a pretty dark tour also so Mary only took a couple of pictures.

Mammoth Cave is a fairly  dry cave and doesn’t have a lot of water created formations, like the caves in SO. IN. On the flip side that makes it a solid cave and not prone to cave-ins.

3/17/2018

No Mammoth Cave tours were to be had today, all booked up, so we took a scenic drive through Mammoth Cave National Park.  It was a nice warm sunny day, we passed a few cars parked along the side of the road, I bet they were mushroom hunting. We didn’t see any deer or turkeys but did see a bat, sadly with the way he was acting I’m pretty sure it was sick. Possibly due to white nose syndrome, it has killed 75% of the bats in the cave and surrounding areas.

We were going to stay a few more days but due to the sudden and unexpected passing of one of Mary’s younger cousin’s we decided to take the good weather window and move to our spot in Indiana tomorrow.

With the front wheel almost off the ground and the ground falling away, someone needs a reminder sometimes. No names mentioned