Urban's Ashes - Day 10 (The Last Day)
Urban’s Ashes – Day 10
The road trip is winding down, and we only have two days to go. Starting out early this
morning from our hotel at Horse Cave, Kentucky, or logical destination was Mammoth
Cave National Park. It is only a few miles down the road, and we arrived before the
doors to the visitor Center were open, so we stood in line with about a dozen others.
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/photo...mmoth_Cave.JPG
Tom posed by the entrance to show he has actually been to a cave and went inside.
One advantage of early arrival is that you get the early tours and, if you have time, you
can even take two different ones the same day. We bought tickets for the Frozen
Niagara tour, which started at 8:30 and lasted 1-¼ hours.
Since Tom had never been in a cave before, I chose a tour that goes to the “wet” cave,
where flowstone, curtains, soda straws, stalagmites and stalactites are in abundance.
Most of Mammoth Cave is “dry”, and only a small portion has these features. I know tom
would have liked to spend more time at the cave and take another tour, but I thought we
had a lot more that we could do along the road, so we departed at 10:30.
(Here is a tip for anyone out there that goes to a cave and wants to take pictures. All of
the pictures below, plus the dozen or so others that I took inside Mammoth Cave were
taken without flash. When you take pictures in that environment, which is already lit up
by artificial colored lights, your flash will overpower those colors and make the surfaces
look white or gray. Let your camera adjust to the colors you are seeing by disabling the
flash while inside the cave. Your photos will look like what you saw if you do that.)
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/photo...Cave_Bacon.jpg
This picture shows several formations, including flowstone, curtains, stalactites and "cave bacon."
I mentioned that Bowling Green is home to the Corvette plant and has a good Corvette
Museum next to it, but Tom didn’t seem to have any interest in going there, so we
passed by and continued on to Nashville.
We skirted Nashville on the Briley Parkway, which goes past the new Grand Ole Opry
Theater, because I wanted to see what damage the earlier floods had done there. It was
extensive, and a lot of rebuilding was going on. All of the large stores that flank the
theater were also closed and looked horrible.
The day seemed to be one of missed opportunities. We wanted to visit a distillery that I
knew was just off I-24 between Nashville and Chattanooga, but somehow we drove on
past the exit and never saw the sign for it. Due to the lack of touring, we arrived at our
destination, Chattanooga, at 4 PM.
I had reserved a room at a hotel west of town, due to its proximity to some optional
sights, Ruby Falls and Rock City. I knew both to be privately owned enterprises up on
Lookout Mountain, so I wasn’t too disappointed to learn that Tom wasn’t in the mood to
go see more attractions. I still had one place to visit, however, so I left him at the motel
room and started a solo quest.
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/photo..._Canyon_SP.jpg
Cloudland Canyon State Park is rather remote and caters to campers and hikers
more than road trippers. It certainly is pretty though.
My destination turned out to be a little farther away than I thought. I drove for miles over
a two-lane highway to get to a Georgia state park named Cloudland Canyon. The name
implied a high and scenic place, and it didn’t disappoint on that score. The only flaw I
found is that it is a park for hikers and campers, neither of which I am. There appeared
to be only one overlook in the park accessible by road. The rest was for to hikers only.
It is beautiful and pretty wild looking, though, so it was worth the time and effort to see it.
Once I got back to the hotel, were able to go downtown to get a nice early dinner. We
found a nice Italian/American restaurant on Broad Street, the Bluewater Grill, and both
had excellent meals at a reasonable price.
We were back at the hotel by dusk, and I actually retired early for the first time on the
entire trip. Tomorrow is an easy day with a five-hour drive to get back home, so with that
on the agenda, I am wrapping up this trip journal. It has been fun and we saw most of
what we had planned. I think we got along well, and I certainly appreciated having Tom
along to converse with and to share the scenery as well as the expenses.
Oh yes, I’m already in the late planning stages for another trip this summer with my wife.
We’re heading out west again. This will be a two-week sojourn to at least two places we
never have seen before, Capitol Reef and El Malpais National Parks. I’ll journal that
one, too.
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/photo...ve_Cricket.jpg
We did see some wildlife in Mammoth Cave. Here is a cave cricket. I wonder if he
had a tiny camera and was taking my picture at the same time.
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/photo...e_Grafitti.jpg
Before mammoth Cave became a national park, the owner used to allow people to
pay him to etch their names or other graffiti in the cave. Here is some of that. You
can see that a Perdue Boilermaker was here in 1926. Today, of course, the policy
is “Leave only footprints, take only memories.”
