It's All About...The Road Trip

First things First: GO PACKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4-0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Favre is my hero.

I had been planning to go camping this weekend, but my plans fell through. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, my friend Elizabeth was sick of being cooped up with a bum wrist, and her VW bug (Doc) was beckoning. Fast forward two days and we both arrived in Louisville, Kentucky. It started out as a quest to stay in a Wigwam Motel, but that was booked. Then we looked for other weird things to do and settled on "Ham Days" in Lebanon, KY. (Who could turn down the chance to watch the "Lil'Miss Ham" pageant, or the PIGasus Parade?) Unfortunately, there wasn't a hotel to be had for 25 miles -- who knew that Ham Days would prove to be so popular? Undaunted, we turned our sights on Louisville. Easy Peasy.

We both pulled into town around noon, and after hauling stuff up to the room, we headed across the street to the Expo Center for some "Liquidation Sale" I'd read about. We had no idea what was being liquidated, but didn't much care. We didn't mean to, but we ended up sneaking in a side door instead of paying the $6 fee to get into the sale. Oops. Good thing we didn't pay -- what a collection of CRAP!! Elizabeth did get some lovely, stylin' sunglasses (although these aren't the ones she bought):

We found us some mighty tempting "Moving" wall art, but somehow resisted:

After I took the sunglasses photo, the Liquidation Security Guy came up to me and politely asked me to put my camera away, as it was against their contract with the fairgrounds to have pictures taken on the premises. Weird, but I was pleased to comply. Depending on your point of view, he either rewarded me for my acquiescence or punished me for my earlier photo taking by telling an awfully long story about a friend of his (he name dropped some country music star of yesteryear, but I'd never heard of him...Johnny Russell, I think?) that ended up having very little point. But the guy was pleasant enough, and was sincerely nice about my camera.

After extricating ourselves from the serial storyteller, we found we'd built up an appetite, so we headed downtown to a pub called...The Pub. British fare, mainly, but a few Americanized things. We both had Guinness and fish and chips. Mmm. Foamy goodness mixed with deep fried yumminess. It was a lovely hour or so. Elizabeth posed, and then I got a shot of the whole place (though the http://www.smartusa.com/ truck was in the way, giving test drives and such):

Full to the brim, we wandered the area for a while. Could I resist the Borders store? No, I could not. (I don't think Elizabeth could either...but she was content to make it my fault that we entered.) We got books and magazines and magnetized dolls and sticky frogs and Walter the Farting Dog. We found it especially amusing that this "Great Lawyers" book was placed with other fantasies, like Marvel comics and Thomas the Train:

We headed out looking for...um...I have no idea what we were looking for, but we ended up over the river in Jeffersonville, Indiana, at "Perkfection," a nice little coffee shop with an incredibly slow baristo. The little Pumpkin was cute, but IT ISN'T EVEN OCTOBER YET!!!!!!!!!!

We had a lot of discussion about what to do next, and we'd settled on buying yarn and then going to play poker across the border in Indiana, but after buying yarn, we decided against the casino. We came back to the room, dug out the blender Elizabeth brought, the booze I'd brought, and we made Bailey's smoothies. (Yes, that is a knitting needle she's stirring with -- don't ask.) YUM, they were awesome. And then I tought her how to crochet. Or rather, I re-taught her, as she'd been proficient several years ago. She had nearly a foot of scarf completed by the time we went to sleep.

This morning, we woke up WAY too early, watched a kids' baseball movie for some silly reason, and packed up. After loading up our respective cars, we went into the complimentary breakfast room and ate. Spontaneous trips are great, but dang, they end so SOON.

Since I was going to Mammoth Cave National Park, Elizabeth and I both headed out in the same direction for about 90 minutes.

At Exit 53, we parted ways. Elizabeth is just not a cave kind of woman...at all. She kept heading south, I turned off to immediately see this:

But no time this trip for Dinosaur World. (We've already decided we're coming back for this one, and the Wax Museum.) It was on to Mammoth Cave, which I have been dying to see since taking a "Geology of National Parks" class a couple of summers back. I was so proud to see the textbook (which I had brought and perused in anticipation) was also being sold in the Park Store!! I bought a ticket for the "New Entrance Tour" and put my purse back in the car -- ABSOLUTELY NO BAGS ALLOWED ON CAVE TOURS, INCLUDING CAMERA BAGS, FANNY PACKS, PURSES, BACKPACKS, OR ANYTHING SIMILAR. Sorry for the all-caps, but they repeated it so many times, it was funny. And yet we still had 2 people on the tour who said, when trying to take purses on the buses, "You mean, I can't even take my PURSE?"

I can't even tell you what a thrill being in that cave was. The entire experience was breathtaking, stunning, awe-inspiring. When I am more awake, I will be writing more about what I've learned about the caves. Come next May or June, I just have to take a 4-day weekend so I can go down there and take several other tours. (Since I'll have been building up endurance for around 7 or 8 months at that point, my plan is to take the Historic Tour, Grand Avenue Tour, and hopefully, the Wild Cave Tour. That is along with one or two surface hikes.) That should be a small warmup for Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons next summer!! Without further comment, here are my Mammoth Cave pictures, Entrance to Exit. I got home tonight, tired, but so, so happy. Road Trips Rock.