Mammoth Cave Railroad Hike & Bike

Following the Civil War, tourism at Mammoth Cave started to grow and the railroads wanted to be a part of that. A spur line was built from Park City, KY up to Mammoth Cave and ran for about 10 years. Today the old rail bed has been converted to a 9-mile hiking and biking trail starting at the Visitor Center and running to Park City (18 miles round trip).

We got a late start on the bikes but were able to get to Park City by lunchtime. It is not your typical rails-to-trails path as they had to work around existing roads and attractions so there were several very steep climbs along the way, especially coming back. We had lunch at The Grand Victorian Inn Bed & Breakfast.  What a delightful place. It was built as a hotel in 1885 and was used as a boys home, a nursing home and as a private home through the years. About 14 years ago it was bought by the current owners and made into the Bed & Breakfast. It is beautiful.

I know you have heard this before, but I really struggle going up hill! Today it seemed worse but we made it back and had a nice dinner and a campfire.

Springs, Drips and Domes

We had a very busy day today. I convinced John that we should do a ‘short’ hike this morning around the visitor’s center. It ended up being a little over 4 miles but we got to see the Echo River Spring and the River Styx Spring. Even though the River Styx is a river in Hades it is a pretty spring that also comes out of the bottom of Mammoth Cave. We viewed the forests for miles around from the Sunset Point, climbed hills, spotted an old stone cabin and enjoyed the cooler weather.

Our second tour into Mammoth Cave began at a different entrance than yesterday.  We learned that there are 23 possible ways to enter the cave but only 5 are used on a regular basis.  The entrance yesterday was the Historic Entrance, today’s tour began at the New Entrance and we came out at the Frozen Niagara Entrance. The other two entrances are used mostly by spelunkers.

The New Entrance is manmade as an enterprising individual wanted to capitalize on the popularity of Mammoth Cave but have his own tour not connected to the main cave. He found a spot where cool air was coming out, blew it up with dynamite and found a 252 foot open column or Dome that dropped down to a floor that would eventually be found to connect to the Rotunda Room. The first tourists in this entrance descended by rope, then by wooden stairs. Between 1965 and 1985 no one went into this part of the cave until the National Park Service spent $1 million to build a 280-step steel staircase. In most places the steps were no wider that our shoulders with rocks jutting out over the stairs in many places and water dripping on our heads. But it was amazing to see and to experience.

The Dome column is considered a living, vertical cave because the water is still carving out the rock. The next portion of the tour was in a room that was very dry and unchanged over thousands of years. It is considered a dormant cave. The last room we were in is considered a dying cave. It has lots of stalactites and stalagmites, dripstone formations and wondrous ceilings. It is called a dying cave because eventually it will fill back up with the limestone formations.  But that won’t happen for millions of years.

In the meantime we certainly enjoyed the beauty of these formations. There was the Frozen Niagara Falls, Bacon formation and other interesting stalagmites that waved like curtains from the ceiling.

Mammoth Cave National Park

We chose to do a cave tour in the heat of the day so we got on our bikes to explore the area this morning.  Our first trek led us down hill to the Green River Ferry Crossing.  I did say DOWN hill, which means we have a long slog UP hill to get back to the park visitor center. We started down another road but realized it, too, was down hill so we turned around, quickly!  A quick exploration of the remainder of the main area of the park and then back to the RV.  I fixed a picnic lunch and then we got into the Jeep and drove to the ferry crossing.  Its much easier to drive than to bike!

We crossed the rive and found a one lane gravel road that went into the forest. We stopped at an old cemetery where more recent burials have happened but there is evidence of graves from the late 1800’s.

After lunch we took our first cave tour.  Mammoth Cave is the longest cave in the US with 405 miles of explored passages. It’s first inhabitants were the pre-historic native Americans. Then in the early 1800’s it was again discovered. During the War of 1812 it was mined for saltpeter and was used as a sanitarium for TB patients (didn’t work), and mined for gypsum but it’s importance is as a tourist attraction. Tours have been given for 200 years, it has been a part of the National Park System for 75 years and the National Park is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year! Its first tour guides were slaves enlisted for this service and one of its most prominent explorers was a black guide, Stephen Bishop.

We walked 2 miles with 120 of our new friends. We saw the rotunda, walked across the Bottomless Pit, squeezed through the Fat Man’s Misery and climbed 155 steps up the Mammoth Dome.  It is a very dry cave but one spot where the water dripped through is called the Butterscotch Sundae. It’s dry because it has a sandstone cap covered with forest.  The Dome was formed when that cap collapsed and caused a sink home.  More tomorrow.

Lincoln's Childhood Home

We left Lexington using our alternate GPS because we are so unhappy with the other one.  If you were wanting to turn onto KY 121 and the GPS told you to turn on Iron Ore Road, wouldn’t you be a bit confused?  We were confused constantly! This GPS is on John’s iPad and at least it give highway numbers but, it too, seems to want to take us down some pretty narrow and winding roads just to save 1 mile! This has caused some confusion and consternation as John doesn’t believe I can read a map well. Anyway, we got to Mammoth Cave, eventually.

Along the way we stopped at the childhood home of Abraham Lincoln. Most of what he experienced as a child was speculation with a few quotes from old Abe.  I guess he got into trouble a lot by trying to follow in the footsteps of friends, like falling into a flooded creek and having to be rescued by said friend. The spot where his family lived is marked by a small log cabin and a large building that at one time was a popular road house to drink and dance.

We were worried that we would not be able to find a campsite in the Mammoth Cave National Park, but since we arrived well before the 4th of July, we have a prime spot and nobody can take it from us since it’s a walk-in site you can’t reserve. 

Bourbon Trail

A couple of years ago we visited Bardstown, KY and took in three distilleries on the Bourbon Trail in that part of the state.  Today we visited three distilleries on the Lexington end of the Bourbon Trail - Wild Turkey, Four Roses and Woodford Reserve.

But first I attended a Cowboy Church service held here in the campground.  I was expecting maybe 10-20 people but as I walked up to the pavilion there were only two men and a van with the Cowboy Church logo on the back.  One man was the ‘choir’ and the other man was the minister and there was me as the lone member of the ‘congregation’. An interesting 45 minutes.

Wild Turkey Distillery was our first stop.  Located on the Kentucky River we crossed over it on an ’S’ curved bridge, one of only two in the US. Next to it was a neat looking, but rusted out, railroad bridge.  We found out later that a private company purchased it so they could reinforce the bridge for the business of bungee jumping. So if you ever want to bungee jump a couple hundred feet over a river this is your place.  We took the whole tour and then tasted four of their bourbons.

I’ll remind you that all bourbon is a whiskey but not all whiskey is a bourbon.  Fifty one percent of bourbon must be made from corn and the rest is rye and barley grains. (Whiskey can have less than 51% corn). It must be cured in a new charred oak barrel and the barrel can only be used one time. You cannot call the spirit ‘bourbon’ until it has been in the barrel for a minimum of 4 years.  One of our tastings was actually not a bourbon but a blend of bourbon and rye whiskey. Our other tastings were of small batch or single barrels. John liked one of the single barrel bourbons while I did not like any of them.

Our next stop was at Four Roses Distillery.  We chose not to tour but just to do a tasting. They had only three styles of bourbon - their yellow label is a young spirit, then they had a small batch and a single barrel. John liked their single barrel. I did not like any of them.

After a picnic lunch under the Four Roses gazebo we traveled to Woodford Reserve. This is one of the oldest distilleries in the US. Again we chose to forgo the tour and just taste their bourbon.  Their claim to fame is that they distill their alcohol three times in copper pot-style stills while the other distilleries only distill once and use a more modern stack-style still.  They only make two bourbons - one is the regular bourbon aged 8-10 years and the other is called a double oaked bourbon because they take the bourbon from the original oak barrels and aged them for an addition 12-18 months in another oak barrel that has been toasted (baked) as apposed to charred or burned. John liked their regular bourbon and I did not like either one.  

Did you see a pattern here? I really do NOT like bourbon. I’ll take an Irish whiskey any day! 

All of these distilleries were located in the heart of Kentucky Bluegrass Country where rolling hills are lined with black or white fences and a number of Irish style rock walls and many horses. Some of the stables were architecturally nicer than many homes and the huge homes were beautiful southern mansions. It was a beautiful afternoon for a drive in the country.

We ate supper at the Red State BBQ restaurant. Some very, very good BBQ.

 

Legacy Trail To Lexington

The Legacy Trail is a biking and walking trail that runs from the Horse Park to downtown Lexington, a distance of about 9 miles. We made it longer by taking a few missed turns but it was a nice trail by farms, stud farms, KU agricultural projects and then into the downtown area. We rode past Transylvania University, the oldest college west of the Allegheny Mountains, established in 1833.  Gratz Park is a pleasant area of beautiful old homes, shaded lanes and parks with fountains.  One of the home was the Hunt-Morgan House, home of the "Thunderbolt of the Confederacy” John Hunt Morgan and Thomas Hunt Morgan who is a Nobel Prize winner in genetics. I wanted to see the house but John didn’t and because they were not busy I got the $3.00, 10-minute tour.

We then headed to the center of town looking for the Farmer’s Market and found the Gay Pride Festival. I guess I should use the politically correct name - LBGT Festival.  There are some really weird people in this world. A quick walk through and we headed to the Farmer’s Market, got some fresh fruit and then had lunch at The Village Idiot. Love the name but the food was not as good as we thought it would be.

After enjoying some more of the old, victorian homes we headed back to the RV. We put about 23 miles on our bikes and legs today.  

Lexington Horse Park

We had an interesting drive to Lexington today.  Our GPS had mapped out a route that we chose to ignore because it was longer than the one we wanted to take and because it was going to take us on an interstate which we also don’t like to drive on. But the route, according to the GPS, was too narrow for our vehicle.  It dinged a warning about every 30 seconds.  We had to turn it off.  We crossed Cumberland Lake Dam (supposedly too narrow for our RV) which brought back memories of a family houseboat vacation on said lake many years ago.

We are staying in the campground of the Kentucky Horse Park. Neither one of us is particularly fond of horses but it was the closes campground to downtown Lexington. It has over 300 full hook up sites, numerous electric only sites and several fields for dry camping. And it is full!  We rode our bikes around the campground and onto the horse park but the place is so big we didn’t cover even a small part of it.

Lots of Walking in Three Days

Dale Hollow State Park has its own golf course so John and I played on Tuesday and Thursday.  This course is a mountain course, much like ones we have played in Branson with lots of hills, elevated tee boxes or elevated greens, nasty sand traps and a couple of water hazards.  We both shot higher scores than on a level course but it was still fun. I like the challenge.

This park has several hiking trails so, despite the heat and high humidity, we chose to take the 6 mile hike.  We hadn’t walked 20 minutes and we were wet with sweat. The trails were of moderate difficulty but the signage was mostly hidden by weeds so we had some difficulty finding where to go.  One area had lots of downed trees over the trail with unmarked detours around them. I guess I shouldn’t complain, we got lots of exercise and sweated off the fat (ha!).

Thursday night we enjoyed some of nature’s fireworks as a thunderstorm moved through the area. Rain drumming on the roof makes for pleasant sleeping and it did break the heat.

Dale Hollow State Park

We reluctantly left Chattanooga today and headed north to Kentucky. We chose Dale Hollow State Park because its on a lake, has hiking and biking trails and it had its own golf course, one of the top 10 courses in KY.

After we got settled in, we got on the bikes to explore the park. John talked me into riding down to the Marina so we could see the lake. What A MISTAKE! It was about 2 miles straight down which means 2 miles straight UP! I think it was worse than biking in the Colorado mountains!

Today is the longest day of the year and there’s a full moon. Its a beautiful evening.

Chattanooga Choo Choo

Frank and Roz lived in Sedalia until about 5 or 6 years ago when they moved to Chattanooga.  We had a delightful breakfast at their house and then they gave us the grand tour of their new home city.  We took an hour hike at The Enterprise Park where over 50 ammunition bunkers are buried in the grounds but it is now a delightful walking and biking park.  We then went downtown to the Farmer’s Market, got some fresh fruit and vegetables and then had lunch.  

Across the street from the restaurant was the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel.  It was a train station that now houses a hotel, restaurant and convention center. Many of the hotel rooms are inside converted sleep cars lined up on the tracks outside the station. A maid let us look inside one of the train cars and it would be lots of fun to stay there.

Frank was a very good city tour guide.  We saw the baseball stadium, the Aquarium, Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge and many more buildings.

Civil War in Chattanooga and Chickamauga

As we have traveled across Tennessee, we have passed a few opportunities to study the Civil War as it was fought in Tennessee, Mississippi, & Alabama. But here in Chattanooga one cannot take in Lookout Mountain, Signal Mountain, Incline Railway, train museums, etc and not learn something about the Civil War battles and the people who led them.  The streets in Chattanooga are named after the many commanders of the Civil War.  North/South streets are named after the Union leaders and the East/West streets are named after the Confederate leaders. There is even a marker in our campground for one of the brigades.  We were told we were sleeping on Civil War soil.

Chattanooga was considered the “gateway” to the Confederacy due to four major railways converging here. President Lincoln felt it was as important for the Union to take over Chattanooga as it was Richmond, the capital of the South, thereby cutting off supply lines to the Confederacy.  The Confederates held Chattanooga until September 1863 when the Union Army pushed into the Valley. By Sept. 20th the Confederates had pushed back the Union assault and the Union held city lay under siege by the Confederates.  Then in November General Grant and reinforcements arrived to help open a supply line into the city.  Nov. 23, 24, & 25 saw continuous fights with both sides winning some and losing some, until the Union Army takes over Lookout Mountain and Chickamauga Creek and forces the Confederate troops to retreat into Georgia. Chattanooga is firmly in Union hands, setting the stage for General Sherman’s march into Atlanta in 1864.

Several hundred thousand men died in November 1863.  Thirty years after the war, in an effort to mend the divided south, Northerners proposed to establish this as a National Military Park to commemorate the fallen soldiers from both sides of the conflict.  1600 monuments, markers, cannons and story boards were erected where the battles had occurred. We drove along a very sobering and educational tour of the battlefield. 

We also enjoyed the Incline Railway up to the top of Lookout Mountain.  It is considered the steepest railway in the world at 72.7% grade. At the top is Point Park where we learned the most about the battles and could see not only the Chickamauga battle fields but the city itself. The park was built by the US Corps of Engineers thus they erected their symbolic gate at the entrance of the park.

Golf, Kayak, and Thunderstorm

A unique aspect of camping in southern state parks is the golf courses connected to the park. We are in a state park campground that has a Jack Nicholas designed course surrounded on three sides by Tims Ford Lake. Tennessee has 8 more state parks with golf courses. 

We played a round on Wednesday morning even though it was threatening rain, which was a good thing because it kept the heat down. I can't say it was a really challenging course but it was fun. In fact, I had such a good time that I talked John into playing again tomorrow morning. I shot a very respectable 97!!

Today and Tuesday we got the inflatable kayak out and paddled around the lake for an hour or so each day but other than that we had pretty lazy days. 

Last night a huge thunderstorm blew through here. The weather alert kept going off during the hour leading up to the storm so we had the RV ready for a high wind event - awning and both slides rolled in.  It was exciting to watch as the rain and clouds rolled in. We thought our neighbor was going to loose his awning but it survived. At one point we couldn't see more than a couple hundred yards down the cove due to heavy rain and the pine cones falling on the roof sounded like gun shots. The weather should be good the rest of the week. 

Tims Ford Lake

Tims Ford Lake is one of the lakes formed by a dam on the Tennessee River and the TVA or Tennessee Valley Authority.  A man with the last name of Tims lived on the river near a place that was easy to cross or ford the river, thus the name Tims Ford.

We got the inflatable kayak out and went paddling a couple of times. We played golf twice on the State Park Golf Course named Bear Trace. We survived a severe thunderstorm. We drove into Winchester for lunch one day and stopped at an Amish store for eggs and butter. I did laundry, we read books, we took naps, and we researched Chattanooga, our next destination.

I’d say this was a very relaxing place to stay.

Jack Daniels Whiskey

We left the Natchez Trace on Sunday morning and drove to Lynchburg, TN, home of the Jack Daniels Distillery then on to Tim’s Ford Lake and State Park.  We drove down some of the narrowest and curviest roads we have ever been on to arrive at the State Park, only to find that we have reservations in another campground that is another 9 miles down the road!  This state park is divided into two locations and we plugged the wrong location into the GPS.

After all the hiking and biking we have done this past week, we have been really lazy and not done much of anything for two days!  The Fairview Campground is closer to Winchester and is right on Tim’s Ford Lake. It is fairly empty during the week but completely full on the weekends so by Friday, we will have to find a new place to stay.  

Even though we arrived at the Jack Daniels Distillery shortly after it opened we were still in the 2nd tour of the morning.  Moore County is a dry county, one cannot buy any kind of liquor in any store and there are no bars in this county, and yet the largest whiskey producer in the world is right in the middle of it in Lynchburg, TN. Jack Daniels owns 88 barrel houses with each house holding anywhere from 1 to 3 million gallons of whiskey.

Jack Daniels, Jasper ‘Jack’ Newton Daniels, was the youngest of 10 kids born in 1850.  At the age of 7 he asked to leave home and moved in with a Lutheran minister and his new wife.  This minister distilled whisky, taught Jack how to do it and sold the recipe and business to him in 1866 when he was 16 years old. The secret to his whiskey is the spring water found on his property. 

We toured the production areas, seeing the mash, the barrels and one line of the bottling process.  Whiskey, and bourbon, is made from 80% corn, barley and rye.  Other than spring water, the other process Jack Daniels uses that nobody else does is to filter the alcohol through 10 feet of charcoal over 4 days to remove all impurities from the liquid.  The charcoal (made on the property) and the barrels are made from sweet maple wood.  The barrels are charred on the inside before adding the whiskey.  It is then stored in the barrel houses for 3-10 years. 70% of the whisky's flavor and its color comes from the barrel.

Jack Daniel’s died at the age of 61 due to a broken toe. Well, not directly.  One morning he couldn’t remember the combination to his safe and in frustration, he kicked the safe and broke his toe.  It got infected and had to be amputated, then the foot got infected and had to be amputated and then the leg and then he died.

At the end of the tour we sampled five of their products - Gentleman Jack, Black Label No. 7, Single Barrel, Honey, and Fire.  The last two are considered liqueurs.  

We had lunch at Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House.  A family style meal of fried chicken, meat loaf, mac and cheese, and whiskey flavored baked apples followed by fudge pie with whiskey flavored whipped cream.  They say you can’t drink the whiskey in this county but you can serve it up on a plate!

Blast from the Past

I just love social media, specifically Facebook. Because of FB, I have reconnected with friends from high school and college and am able to keep up to date with some of the things they are doing - travel, sports, family, etc.  

A day or so ago I saw on FB that one of my roommates from college was in Memphis and would be traveling across Tennessee to go back to their home near Atlanta. On an impulse, I reached out to them to let them know we were almost in their path and invited them to stop by our campsite for a visit. I’m not sure when we last saw Debbie and Johnny but I think it might have been shortly before we moved to Sedalia in 1976! 

They took me up on the invitation and we had a delightful visit at the RV. They stayed for lunch but couldn’t spend much more time as they had a five hour drive ahead of them.  It was so much fun to see them and we talked so much that we totally forgot to take a picture!  Hopefully, we will see them again in the near future and that it won’t take 30+ years to do this again!

Biking the Trace

Because of bridge construction on the Natchez Trace near our campground, we had to load the bikes onto the Jeep and drive to the other side of the bridge so we could explore the Trace north of here. 

We started at Fall Hollow where a small creek runs over steep drop-offs to create some pretty falls.  Then we rode up the longest hill ever keeping in mind that it will be down hill all the way back to the car.  Yeah, right!  One of our diversions was at a stop call Tobacco Farm.  We rode on a shaded, gravel road thinking it would eventually connect back with the Trace.  But it didn’t, so after about 1-1/2 miles we turned around and rode back UP the hill, took a short cut and got back on the road. 

We stopped for a picnic at another pull out then about 2 miles further we found a restroom so we could refill our water bottles.  That’s when we turned around and headed back.  It was very hot on the road and we were always on the lookout for a shady area to rest and drink water.  We logged 28.5 miles on our bikes today and our behinds are feeling pretty bruised.