Chasing Cars: Bristol (and the South)

[UKCraig]

Sunday 26th August

If yesterday had been heaven for me then today was Andy’s day; we had 340 miles of driving ahead of us as we headed out to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It wasn’t the National Park that Andy was looking forward to but our rest stop. We’d decided to break our journey by stopping for lunch along the way and picked the town of Corbin, KY on the basis that it was exactly half-way along the route. It turned out that it was also home to Sanders Café – better known as the very first KFC. Perfect!

I briefly thought I’d discovered the secret of getting Andy out of the motel room of a morning – clapping my hands together and hissing at him as if he was a wayward cat – but he tired of this and began to ignore me until I mentioned the idea of getting some breakfast. I suggested a fry-up at the truck stop along the road but this was apparently not up to snuff so he made do with a Subway. Now I appreciate that I’m not a marketing man but they really should rename it the ‘Heart attack in a sub special’ or something. I gave it a miss and bought an apple instead which, looking back, was never going to set me up for the day.

We left the interstate when we spotted a sign for Dollywood – there must have been a photo opportunity there, surely? – but turned back after stopping at a visitor center to be told it was many miles away. Shortly after we joined the back of a huge traffic jam so, spotting an exit,I turned off in the hope that the satnav would find us a new route. Once again it came to the rescue and, not only did it steer us round the traffic, it enabled us to enjoy a Dukes Of Hazzard moment as we sped down six or seven miles of dirt track before finally rejoining the interstate the other side of the traffic jam.

It proved reasonably tricky to find Sanders Café as we didn’t have a proper address for it. And, as anyone knows, if you’re going to find somewhere, it generally helps to have an address. We eventually lucked upon it which was very good news as we were both starving by this point. Nothing is ever easy, of course, but getting served in there proved to be next to impossible. If the Colonel had been there he would have fired them all.

Other than a quick stop in nearby London – another photo op, of course! – we were foot to the floor after lunch. Mammoth Cave beckoned and we both agreed that it would be nice to end the day early for once, light up the bbq and drink some beer. When we’d stopped in the welcome center on the Kentucky border we had picked up a leaflet for a place calling itself Dinosaur World. If we finished early enough it might even be amusing to stop there.

In the end it all went horribly wrong. We missed the exit for Dinosaur World and then, well I’m not really sure how else I can describe it, the brown stuff struck the propeller. We’d ignored a sign for Mammoth Cave and decided to follow the directions suggested by the satnav – it had yet to let us down, of course, so why would it suddenly do so now? It took us ten or fifteen miles off the interstate and then dumped us in someone’s driveway. Some people may say that I’m not the brightest person in this world of ours, but even I could spot that this wasn’t a national park so we consulted the map.

I spotted a route and handed the map to Andy so that he could direct me along it. I won’t go into too much detail except to say that there were a lot of raised voices, some swearing and I even damaged the steering wheel when I punched the horn in frustration. After driving for an hour – with continued reassurances that we were going in the right direction – I pulled the car over and got my hands on the map. We had so NOT been heading in the right direction. Seeing the commotion, and probably sensing that I was going to kill my navigator, a helpful local pulled over and offered directions. It seems that our problems had started back in Brownsville so, once we arrived back there, we stopped for pizza to celebrate having wasted half a tank of gas. Genius.

We were soon out of Brownsville and into Mammoth Cave National Park at long long last. It was getting dark; so much for a nice early conclusion to the day. We pitched our tents, lit a fire and hoped that a couple of beers would relieve the tension.