Our destination today was Louisville Kentucky. Starting our day in Memphis we would be driving the length of Tennessee and all the way through Kentucky to it's northern most city, and home of the Kentucky Derby, Louisville. The drive was mostly trough gently rolling hills the was heavily wooded. Traffic on Interstates 40 and 65 was thick with truck traffic, what with Memphis being a major shipping hub with is large Federal Express presence there. It made for a slightly more stressful drive, but not too bad.
The highlight of the day was a visit to Mammoth Cave National Park, located about halfway between Nashville, TN and Louisville, KY. The park is in about 10 miles off the interstate, heavily wooded and very hilly. After a stop at the visitor center we were encouraged to take a cave tour to really get the full experience of the park. We took the shortest tour which was about 2 hours, all underground. It was a very interesting little adventure. Lot's of narrow stairs, and skinny short little passageways. Catie was initially a little scarred. So I told her to pretend it was a ride and Disneyland (the rock almost looked fake like that) and surprisingly that seemed to help. There were also several large chambers that we visited. One section called Frozen Niagara was a 50 foot rock formation that looked like a frozen waterfall. Very cool. I tried taking some pictures but with the low light they didn't turn out too well.
After leaving the park, we drove into a very strong Thunder storm. The rain was really pouring down, so much so that the wipers could not keep up. So, with huge flashes of lightning and loud booming claps of thunder we slowly made our way north. To make things even more exciting, we were running low on gas. So after about 15 minutes of crawling along, we came to a gas station. Even though Chris and the kids cautioned against it, I stopped and got out to fill up. Just as I was putting the nozzle in the tank a huge bolt of lightning crashed, so close that the flash and boom were simultaneous. The power to the gas pump went out and the hair on the back of my neck stood up! In the blink of an eye, I put away the nozzle and hustled back into the car. OK Lord, I get it! Not the right time to be pumping gas!! So we drove further north, eventually getting out ahead of the storm. We were then able to make our way to the small town of Munfordville Kentucky. After filling up the tank we stopped in at the local Pizza Hut for dinner. The restaurant was decorated with photos commemorating the civil war Battle for Munfordwille including a photo of the "Captor of Munfordville" General Braxton Bragg. I very powerful reminder that we are in the south!
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