The Villages

We're now in The Villages, FL staying at Laura's mom's house for a couple of days. The drive down was interesting. Google reported a massive backup on I-75 just north of The Villages, but for some reason didn't want to reroute us. On the fly, Laura installed Waze and it immediately dumped us off of I-75 and got us to our destination on back roads. By our estimate, Waze saved us at least an hour. Not sure what was going on with Google, but we're definitely going to consult Waze in future travel.

The Villages is a town in FL that is entirely built around retirees. The planning is done in such a way that neighborhoods surround recreation centers and are connected by walking and golf cart paths. It's very pedestrian friendly as a result, even though there are relatively few pedestrians.

Laura and I walked for about an hour this evening and saw a few notable sights. For example, this family of herons, adults on the outside, two juveniles in the middle:

 This group of ducks swimming in a golf course pond:

 And, a lovely sunset reflected in another pond:

We also had a chance to visit with Tom and Sassy (the little dog):

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get the oil changed in the Honda and maybe get a SunPass for the toll roads we're going to encounter south of here as we head to Miami.

Nashville and Atlanta

Mostly a travel day today. We left our Horse Cave, KY campsite at around 8:30am.

We were able to have lunch with Annie Baker in Nashville at B.A.D. Nashville a low-key southern comfort food place. To prove this claim, Laura had an excellent catfish sandwich. I just went with a salad (which was also good). Annie seems to be doing well at her internship in Nashville this summer. She returns to Colorado School of Mines in the fall for her senior year where she will finish up an electrical engineering degree.

We also walked around Nashville a bit. As we walked up the main drag along Broadway, there were already country bands playing in bars at 11am. Would love to go back sometime and visit when we have more time and are able to do a little bar hopping.

After lunch, we drove to Atlanta and had dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Scott Bendzlowicz. It was great catching up with him. The food was really good and would certainly have held its own in Walla Walla.

After dinner, we traveled south along I-75 for another 50 miles or so and are now in a hotel along the highway. We're watching the Mariners play the Yankees and it's currently tied at 5-5 in the 9th inning. We're hoping to get to Laura's Mom's house in The Villages tomorrow in the mid-afternoon, so probably have to turn off the game and go to sleep now. Goodnight.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, day 2

We spent the day in Mammoth Cave National Park. We did the 2-hour Domes and Dripstones tour in the morning. In the afternoon, we did the 2-hour Historic tour. I guess if I had to choose, I'd recommend the Historic tour. I particularly liked the historical graffiti. The caves have been tourist attractions since the early 1800's. Before it was designated a national park in the early 1900's, visitors to Mammoth Cave were encouraged to scratch their names on the walls in the caves:

 We saw some with years attached as early as 1838. In the early days before they stopped using whale oil lamps, folks would spell their names and messages on the ceilings in soot from the lantern flames. Apparently in 1855, this person thought the ceiling of a cave 300 ft underground in rural Kentucky was a great place to promote their "Sax & Horn Band":

 Here are some more:

 I even spotted an "Albert" scratched into a wall:

 Graffiti aside, there were some beautiful limestone formations:

 

 And, whenever we exited a cave, we had to wash our feet. Several years ago the bat populations in these caves were decimated with the "white-nose fungus". The foot washing is meant to kill the fungus spoors on our shoes so that we don't track them into other uncontaminated caves that we might visit.

 We also hiked quite a bit on the surface. The whole area is dotted with large sink holes the funnel water into the caves below. Most of the surface hikes are meant to showcase these geologic features. Here is a shot of one of the walls of the sinkhole as we stood in the bottom:

On our drive out of the park we noticed this aptly named cemetary, "Little Hope", which could be read rather darkly depending on your philosophical outlook, haha:

 There were some folks in this cemetery born as early as the 1770's.

Tonight will be our last night in the tent. We're still camped at the KOA in Horse Cave, KY. Tomorrow it's on to Atlanta.

Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, day 1

We drove from St. Louis to Mammoth Cave today, a relatively short 5 hour drive. We went straight to the park to get tix for cave tours tomorrow. With tix in hand, we walked around the grounds a bit. There's not much to see there above ground. However, there are a couple places where what looks like an ordinary pool of water is actually a flooded entrance to the "longest known cave system in the world." One such pool is pictured here:

 The forested areas above the caves are typical eastern US deciduous forest. I've spent a lot of time in places like this, so it was nice to just walk in the woods.

 Through one break in the trees you could see a bit down the valley. The biggest difference between the hills here and those back in Walla Walla is that they are densely covered in forest. You don't really get to see the underlying geology.

 We had dinner at Bucky Bee's BBQ in Horse Cave, KY. High quality, small-town Kentucky pulled-pork BBQ:

 Sunset at the campground was lovely.

But, pet peeve about campgrounds, it is not cool to locate the tent sites so that tent campers have to walk past 250 yards of cushy RVs, lined up one after the other, each with their very own toilets, to get to the public bathroom. Here's hoping I don't have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

Looking forward to tomorrow's underground tours. I'll take what pictures I can.

St. Louis, MO

We left our KOA campsite in Salina this morning about 8:30am. Campsites are interesting in the way that for a day at a time an ad hoc community is created and dissolved. We did laundry and met a couple from FL that toured the country with their sailboat and competed in races. We got to talking about Rachel and her friend Shubham who has a productive mango tree in his backyard. Turns out these folks too had a productive mango tree and further, they had a bunch of their mangos with them on the trip. They shared a bunch of them with us. So I had some very fresh, ripe mango for breakfast this morning.

 As is our habit, we stopped in a small town for lunch during today's drive. Today's stop was in Boonville, MO. One really neat thing about Boonville is that it is a stop on the Missouri KATY rails-to-trails project. At 260 miles, it's one of the longest such projects in the country. Laura and I walked along the trail for a while and wished we had our bikes with us so we could see more of it. I met a guy that was riding the entire length of the trail for a long weekend. He took a train to one end with his bike and his gear and was riding back to the other end where his car was parked. Here's a typical "stop" along the trail.

 Here's a farm that can be seen from the part of the trail we walked:

 This is the restored original railway station from when the trail was still a rail. It's now a bike shop:

 This old-style brick warehouse is now a kind of whole foods grocery store:

 After lunch we finished our day's drive at Laura's Aunt Judy's house outside of St. Louis. There, along with Aunt Judy, we met two of Laura's cousins, Chris and Will and Chris' children Thuy-Anh, Thao-Anh and Jamison. All great kids, we especially enjoyed getting to know them. We played Yahtzee and Judy rolled 3 Yahtzees! We got to know Thuy-Anh and Thao-Anh a bit.

 It was a typical hot, humid day in St. Louis. There was a water gun battle:

 After that, the Yahtzee, Thao-Anh is the best most animated dice roller:

It was really great catching up with these fine folks. I hope we can stay in touch a bit more moving forward. Thuy-Anh is in a dual-language program (spanish) at her elementary school. Maybe Laura and I can stay in touch and share a bit of our Spanish experience with her.

Tonight we're in a Days Inn in St. Louis--taking a break from the tent for a night. Tomorrow on to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and back into the tent.