8 May Land Between the Lakes

We spent the day exploring the Land Between the Lakes. Formerly the Land Between the Rivers, it was a narrow ridge of land between the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. In the 1940s – 60s the rivers were dammed to create Lake Barkley and Lake Kentucky, and the residents of the area were relocated (sometimes forcibly) to make way for both the lakes and the new recreation area.

In the morning we visited the Woodlands Nature Station, home to animals, reptiles and birds who have been injured and rehabilitated but are unable to be released back to the wild. We met Bobcat, who was found with a broken leg at only 2 months old. He thinks he’s a domestic cat now and loves a good belly rub.

The Station is also home to owls, eagles, vultures, wild turkeys, deer, turtles, coyotes, a groundhog, and opossum and two red wolves (endangered). They were all pretty laid back in the heat.

The gardens were stunning, with native species coming into flower, lots of shade trees and bushes for the numerous birds. They even have bat habitats up on big poles in the garden, and a note not to eat blackberries because the bats poop on them.

The afternoon we spent at Homeplace 1850s Working Farm and Living History Museum. There were houses, barns, a blacksmith shop, gardens, a tobacco barn (with tobacco hanging from the rafters, storehouses, a smokehouse, and an assortment of animal breeds from the period. 

We said hello to some very vocal (and itchy) black pigs, Leicester sheep, mules, Ayrshire oxen with wide span horns, black Cayuga ducks and Dominique chooks.

People in historical dress were working on the farm and happy to answer questions and show us around. We stopped by the vege patch and talked to the women about the heritage seeds and plants they were tending.

We are camped up on the shores of the Lake Kentucky. This is our last night on the road, tomorrow we had to Memphis for a couple of days of cleaning and prepping the van to go back into storage. Then we fly out on the 12^th and back in Aus on the 14^th (lose a day over the date line).

Click the link below to see where I am located.
http://fms.ws/17D9So/36.77404N/88.13409W 

7 May Bowling Green – Land Between the Lakes.

We got up a little early (7:30am on holidays is early isn’t it??), packed up and made our way to the NCM Motorsports park for Steve’s Corvette drive experience.  There were a couple of other groups running cars (Mustangs) on the track so we waited and watched.  

Steve was then taken to his Corvette for the Touring experience, a silver 2017 base model Stingray with a plentiful 460 Kentucky ponies under the hood.  He was given 4 laps in a follow-the-pace-car scenario (so he couldn’t get too carried away) around the racetrack.  He reported that it was a great experience and that the pace car driver allowed him to give the car a pretty good workout as he was the only one on the track with the pace car.  He managed to get it to a little over 120mph (about 200kph) down the straight.  

As soon as that was over, he was up for his hot laps in a 2007 model Stingray, riding shotgun with an experienced driver.  This car had a bountiful 505 Kentucky stallions under the hood.  These 2x laps were completed in a much quicker time and we couldn’t seem to get the smile off Steve’s face.  He reported that the driver basically said ”you ok to go”….reply was “yes” and the car then launched at the first corner and proceeded to roar around the track wheels screeching the whole way.  He clocked a bit over 140mph down the straight before entering the first corner for the second lap.  There was an obvious difference between touring laps and the hotlaps. It was a great experience and 50^th birthday present for Steve.

After Steve had settled down and Ros felt that he wasn’t going to try and drive the RV like the Corvette, we dove on to the Shaker Settlement Museum a little to the east of Bowling Green. The Shakers were an innovative, hard-working religious group, dedicated to communal living and celibacy, and this community was established in 1807 and closed in 1922. The community was built to house, occupy and support hundreds of people, with 4 communal living houses each with space for 200 occupants. Despite the celibacy, the movement attracted people, with their innovation, and comfort (indoor plumbing, heating, ample food) during times when those things were a luxury for all but the very wealthy. Eventually though, celibacy proved to be their undoing, as without children, they relied on new members for growth. There is one community remaining in the US, with an 80-year-old woman and a man in his 60’s. The last of the Shakers.

The Shakers were governed by a man and a woman, known as the Ministry, so they were ahead of their time in equality of gender and (to a certain degree) race. Families joined the Shakers with slaves, and subsequently freed the slaves into the community, but when the family moved on, the slaves went too.

The self guided village tour was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. There was plenty to see. They even had a weighbridge in the barn.

Driving to Land Between the Lakes, we passed an Amish family, taking a spin with the top down. The kid on the back gave us a wave.

Click the link below to see where I am located.
http://fms.ws/17A_DW/36.85519N/87.91553W

6 May Bowling Green

We had plans for sightseeing, but google searching told us that most places were closed on Monday. So we had a day in for Ros to do some design work for two leadership programs she is running when we get back. Steve took the scooter for a spin into to Central Bowling and bought back icecream.

5 May Cave City – Bowling Green

We left the campsite early to head back to Mammoth Cave for our second tour – Domes and Dripstones. This time we were bussed to the “new entrance”, created with dynamite by an oilman called George Morrison. Caves were a big and profitable industry, so he purchased land with a sinkhole, and blasted out the sinkhole to create an entrance to the cave.

The new entrance traverses vertically done via 280 winding and narrow stairs. Twisting and turning, we climbed down a series of domes to arrive at a small hall for a break. Then it was a fairly easy climb to Frozen Niagara Falls, the dripstone section of the cave, then out via another entrance for the bus back.

Driving on, we made good time to Bowling Green and the National Corvette Museum.

The museum had a fascinating story that we were not expecting. In Feb 2012, (fortunately in the early hours of the morning), a giant sinkhole opened up in their main display hall, swallowing up eight of their most unique and irreplaceable cars, including the 1992 “1 Millionth” Corvette. Only three of the cars were repairable, the rest crushed. The recovery and rebuild process was all included in the interactive displays, and there is even a glass covered hole in the floor so visitors can see into the 30 foot deep sinkhole, and tape on the floor marking the sinkhole edges and also the outline of the much bigger cave that was exposed by the hole.

We also followed the history of the Corvette, from the first model in 1953 through to the present. They don’t have vehicles from every year on show but do have concept cars and info about the design process.

We found an RV Park next to a closed-up amusement park, with an old wooden rollercoaster. Sadly, it was next to the drag strip and the races went at full volume until nearly midnight.

Click the link below to see where I am located.
http://fms.ws/176Px9/37.02252N/86.39493W

4 May Cave City

We spent the day at Mammoth Caves National Park. Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system in the world, currently mapped at 417 miles long. Around 4-5 miles is surveyed every year by volunteer cavers. Archaeological finds show that the Native Americans were venturing deep into the cave, possibly to mine for minerals.

The cave was rediscovered in the late 1790s and was mined for nitre to make saltpetre (a key ingredient in gunpowder). It was also briefly used as a tuberculosis hospital (it didn’t work) and by 1816 it had become a tourist attraction.

We chose the historical tour and after we had been for a hike to kill time, we entered the cave via the historical entrance. 

At this point of the tour the cave is wide and high, created by a vast underground river. We passed the nitre mining operations, where soil from the cave was mixed with water and then filtered to remove the mud, leaving a frothy mix behind. That mix was combined with potash and boiled down until it crystalized into saltpetre.

The wide passages eventually turned to the tight twisters known as Fat Man’s Misery and Tall Mans Agony. Low, narrow and pretty squeezy in places, and crossing the Bottomless Pit. Breaking out of the twisters, we arrived at the foot of the 192-foot high Mammoth Dome.

The bad news was we had to climb it. (The Parks service have installed stairs, so it wasn’t difficult). Along the way up there were landings to view the dome looking up and down into the pit.

Looping back, we saw historical signatures made with candle soot on the cave ceilings, then we exited the cave through the historical entrance again.

We decided to hike further and headed on a loop that took us past a cave that is blocked off to the public to protect the bat population from disease.

3 May Frankfort – Cave City

Raining steadily this morning as we packed up to leave. This RV park was lovely, and as we were about to leave the geese we have heard chatting in the mornings brought their row of new babies cruising past on the creek.

We had a frustrating drive to Makers Mark distillery. The GPS kept taking us down narrow country lanes, so we had to turn around. Would have been fine in a car, but not in an RV this size. The minor roads in Kentucky don’t have shoulders and often have a drop off into a drain. There were a few times when we met people driving the other way that the outside back wheel was over the ditch and we were hanging onto the road with the inside one. BUT… we got there in the end. We are learning to ignore the GPS when the road looks dodgy and keep driving while she (her name is Samantha, she tells us) recalculates and finds another route.

By the time we got to Makers Mark it was lunchtime, so we skipped the tour and went straight to tastings. We started in the tour headquarters with their Mint Julep – bourbon, simple syrup and mint in a bottle. Quite yummy. We had a walk in the rain down to their café bar room and tried the sample flight of 5. The white whiskey, Makers Mark, Makers Mark 46, a barrel proof, and a private select blend. We both thought the 46 and the private blend were the pick of the pack. The bar was nice, we sat under the veranda with the drinks overlooking the picturesque stone wall and creek. 

It rained steadily, and it was very pleasant drinking bourbon and watching the rain falling. A bluegrass band was playing in a marquee next door, and lots of relaxed and friendly people around.

We visited the gift shop on the way out. When you buy a bottle they let you dip it into the distinctive red wax, and add the makers mark seal to the top. Lots of people were lined up to do that and have their picture taken doing it. We didn’t buy anything, but it was interesting to note as a valuable marketing tactic!

Driving on, we were in the homelands of Abraham Lincoln, who was born and bred a poor country lad in Kentucky. We stopped briefly at one of the places he lived as a boy, then stopped in at his birthplace. The sweeping pathway led us to a flagpole with a view of a staircase and a stone monument. 

Inside the monument building is a log cabin symbolic of the one Lincoln was born in. Before the monument was constructed in 1909-1911, the cabin was believed to be the actual birthplace of Lincoln but testing in 2000 identified it as constructed in 1840s and thus too recent to be the real thing. Impressive, none the less.

We are set up for the next few nights at Cave City, just outside Mammoth Cave National Park.

Click the link below to see where I am located.
http://fms.ws/172May/37.13491N/85.96915W

2 May Frankfort – Lexington - Frankfort

We booked ourselves a tour of the Keeneland Race Course. The tour guide was an expat Aussie who had been in the States since the 80s. Very knowledgeable and had lots of info about the track and the horses.

We had a tour of the private members area – the club is huge and was built as a private racetrack in the 1930s. In the members stand the seats are named, and the rights are passed down through families, so the chances of ever being able to buy in are pretty slim.

We saw horses on trackwork, the young horses galloping in pairs, the older ones on their own, and some cantering. The track workers ride up to 8 horses in a morning.

We stood in the winner’s circle, constructed for the visit of the Queen in the 80s.

The stables are impressive, holding up to 1951 horses. 

The Sales Pavilion is where Keeneland hold four sales a year and are the best known thoroughbred sales company in the world, selling millions of dollars worth of horses in each sale, to global purchasers.

After lunch we visited the local Buffalo Trace Distillery. 

The distillery has been in continuous operation for over 200 years, distilling “medicinal bourbon” during prohibition. In those days’ doctors prescribed alcoholic drinks for just about every ailment. 

The tour was more perfunctory than the others we have done, with a video, a visit to a rick house, then a tasting. The tasting was 2 bourbons, their white whiskey (before it goes into barrels to be aged) and their cream liqueur. They were nice enough, but we were not tempted to buy. We asked if there were any premium tastings, but no.