On September 7, we drove to Batesville, Indiana for a short 4-night stay at Indian Lakes RV Campground. We didn't do too much during our time in Indiana. The campground had a newly-renovated pool, so we enjoyed swimming a few times and also exploring the area around the campground.
Pat had the whole pool to himself!
We took a road trip to nearby Cincinnati on September 10th. Myah was in need of a grooming, so we dropped her off at PetSmart in a suburb of Cincinnati. While she was being groomed, we spent the time having lunch, exploring the city, and walking along the Ohio River for a few hours.
On September 11th, we headed to Diamond Caverns RV Resort and Golf campground in Park City, KY. The campground is on the border of Mammoth Cave National Park where the cave is the main attraction. According to Wikipedia, this cave is "the longest cave system known in the world with more than 420 miles of surveyed passageways."
I scheduled 2 cave tours for the following week. On Monday we enjoyed a 2 hour "Domes and Dripstones Tour" and on Wednesday we did a more adventurous 4 mile, 4 hour tour called the "Grand Avenue Tour". We got a good workout on the 1313 steps, too! We really enjoyed this particular trail because of the slot canyons and tubular passageways that we found similar to hiking through a southwestern canyon. Both tours ended with a visit to the amazing "Frozen Niagara", which was reminiscent of visiting Niagara Falls in the winter.
Myah says "welcome to cave country"!
Scroll to see Mammoth Cave pics.
Also, during our stay, we explored the the several hiking trails around the park visitor center as well as biked the 16-mile round trip path that ran from the campground to the the visitor center.
Bowling Green, KY was only 30 minutes away from the campsite, so we took a few day trips during our stay. This city is home to the National Corvette Museum. We spent about 1.5 hours touring the facility which included everything from the history of the corvette to corvettes involved in the racing industry and everything in between. If you are a corvette enthusiast, you should plan to visit this museum if you find yourself in Bowling Green.
Diamond Caverns is another cave that was close to our campground. This cave is much smaller than Mammoth Cave, and was a 1 hour tour. It is considered a wet cave and therefore had unique, intricate formations due to the flow of water over millions of years. The cave is still growing as the water continues to drip through it today. There were several beautiful examples of formations including stalagmites, stalactites and drapery formations in this cave (see pics below). It was interesting to see the differences between the formations we saw in Mammoth Cave compared to Diamond Caverns.
Scroll to see pics of Diamond Caverns.
The Green River (and it really is green) flows though Mammoth Cave National Park. We went on a kayaking excursion one afternoon. The river has quite a strong running current. Pat thought it would be best to paddle against the current on the way out so that we could take it easy on the way back. After about an hour paddling against the current, we barely needed to paddle down the "lazy river" on the way back. We were at our launch site within 30 minutes of turning around!