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.

Salina, KS

Yes, that's Salina (sal-eye'-nuh). It's a town about the size of Walla Walla in the middle of Kansas. Largely an agricultural town that, unlike Walla Walla, lacks the tourism component. We walked the downtown "main street" this evening and it was pretty dead. A lot of store fronts either closed or struggling. It seemed to be a vision of Walla Walla without the colleges or the wine industry. To their credit, there's clearly a group of people trying to keep the downtown area vibrant. Here are a few pics. The first one, strategically placed in front of the Dept of Corrections Parole Office seems to be a message to folks on parole:

 This statue along "main st" is a bit more uplifting:

 This one, the guy in front is branding a steer, is sure to be a big hit with the PETA folks:

 And, finally, here a shot of me in front of the official vehicle of the state of Kansas:

A constant here in Kansas seems to be 30mph winds. Here's a possibly comical timelapse of Laura and me putting up our tent in a brisk wind:

Speaking of wind, the drive along I-70 east from Denver to here was into a stiff head to cross wind. The miles-per-gallon display in the Honda was alarmingly low, about 23 mpg. Of course, the stiff head wind along with the 80mph speed all day probably didn't help.

It's pretty warm this evening and more humid than anything we've experienced so far on this trip. We're definitely transitioning to the typical hot and humid summer climate of the eastern United States. Fortunately, there seems to be no risk of thunderstorms this evening and we head off to St. Louis tomorrow where we will stay in a hotel!

Rocky Mountain National Park

We got up early today, went to Safeway to get lunch for the trail, drove up to the Glacier Basin Park & Ride inside Rocky Mountain National Park and caught the shuttle up to the Glacier Gorge Trailhead. There, we hiked up to Alberta Falls and then looped around to Dream Lake, Emerald Lake and finally ended at Bear Lake. Total distance about 8 miles. We had lunch at Dream Lake--just a couple of sandwiches that we bought at Safeway. Here are a few pictures. First an obligatory wildflower photo:

 Next one of the few remaining patches of snow up there:

 This was my favorite vista of the day, though there were many beautiful panoramas. This is looking up Loch Vale:

Along with ground squirrels, birds, marmots, and brook trout, we saw these bull elk hanging out the Alpine Visitor Center:

We're hoping to pull up stakes (literally) tomorrow early and driving to Salina, KS.