Eastbound and Down
Finally! I’ve been waiting to use this title since we started the blog. For those who may be unaware, Eastbound and Down is a song made famous by 1977’s number one movie (no, not Star Wars) Smokey and the Bandit. The movie is about mustache-inspiration Burt Reynolds driving a Pontiac Firebird Trans Am (Bandit) at high speeds to escort a semi-truck smuggling a trailer full of Coors beer from Texarkana, TX to Atlanta, GA, which was illegal at the time for some reason, avoiding law enforcement (Smokies) all the way. Now Coors isn’t awful beer, but it’s certainly not worth smuggling anywhere. I guess the lure of the forbidden was just too strong. As to the title and lyrics of the song, Atlanta is east of Texarkana, but actually a bit further north, so the song should really be called Eastbound and Slightly Up. But what are you gonna do? The seventies must have been a wild time for outlaw country singer/songwriters, so I suppose a lapse in Jerry Reed’s geographic knowledge can be forgiven.
Anyway… this post will cover our travel both eastbound and down from Wisconsin to Kentucky. We made the trip driving at legal speeds and I’m pretty sure the small amount of beer we carried was 50-state legal, but I was wearing a mustache.
We rolled out of Neshonoc Lakeside Camping Resort on Wednesday, September 23, headed south to Illinois. Our stopping point was Galesburg East Campground, which we arrived at after an uneventful drive. We don’t like traveling too quickly, and had some work to get done on Thursday, so we stayed until Saturday. We didn’t leave the park for any adventures, but enjoyed some of the amenities available on site including a mini-golf course and a small fishing pond, which seemed to be full of tiny starving bluegills.
On Saturday, we packed up and hit the road again, headed for a new state. Our home for the next six nights was Horseshoe Lakes RV Campground in Clinton, Indiana. This is a very pretty property, which as the name implies, has a few lakes.
Horseshoe Lakes is part of the Thousand Trails network, which is very popular with families that are on the road fulltime. We were able to meet a couple of them with kids Izzy’s age and arrange for some playground playdates and a nice evening around the firepit.
She and I had some fun by ourselves too, when other kids weren’t available.
All too soon, it was time to head out again, this time driving across Indiana and Kentucky. We spotted a few interesting things on this drive.
We made it to Singing Hills RV Park in Cave City, Kentucky for a short two-night stay. In addition to breaking up what would otherwise be a long drive, we were here to finally visit our first national park. Somehow, we hadn’t managed to visit any of our nation’s greatest parks in nearly a year of living on the road. We certainly wanted to, but our previous travels hadn’t taken us close enough or given us the time to visit them. Some of my coworkers in San Francisco even gave me a very thoughtful and generous going away gift in the form of an REI gift card with enough funds to purchase an annual national parks pass. It turns out, however, that you don’t need a pass to visit Mammoth Cave National Park, as they are funded by fees charged for cave tours.
We had a reservation to enter the cave at a specific time, but arrived early to check things out. We hit up the gift shop and spoke to one of the park rangers about the National Park Service Junior Ranger program. Due to COVID concerns, the program was structured a little differently from normal. Izzy received a workbook and a badge, and could become a Mammoth Cave Junior Park Ranger, by completing activities in the workbook. She was a little confused as to why she had to actually learn about the park. After all, she already had the badge! But we did get them done over the next couple of days.
Then we found a nice quiet area of the park for a picnic.
After lunch it was time to enter the cave! Due to the pandemic, the rangers weren’t leading any tours, but were still allowing visitors to enter and guide themselves.
We started out with a quick meeting briefing from a ranger along with everyone else in our time slot about what to expect in the cave (not bathrooms). We then went on a short hike through the pretty Kentucky forest, before arriving at the main entrance of the cave and climbing down a large set of stairs. Once underground, there was a long tunnel, before the cave really became mammoth.
Stepping out of the tunnel into the first large cavern is quite impressive. It is a huge space, carved out of the rock, with a mostly flat floor, steep walls and a very tall curving ceiling. There are well placed electric lights to see in what would otherwise be pitch black, and allow you to really appreciate the grandeur of it all.
Pictures don’t do it justice, and the dim lighting makes photos difficult, but we still tried.
We walked on sidewalks above the floor of the cave and visited several caverns. The most surprising thing for me was that it didn’t feel like a cave inside. It was cool, but it wasn’t damp or dank. It was actually completely dry without any water dripping anywhere, so there were no stalactites or stalagmites as you may assume a giant cave would be full of. We also didn’t see any plants, animals, or Mole Men in the cave, although the system is supposed to contain bats, some insects, and if you go deep enough to find the underground lakes and rivers, blind cave fish and shrimp.
Although this was her first cave, Izzy never seemed terribly impressed. So after exploring a good portion of the caverns open to us, she was getting kind of tired, so we decided not to push her any further and headed back to the surface world.
After exiting the cave, we had to walk through a shallow tray of disinfectant to prevent the spread of a fungal bat disease. Of course, Izzy thought this was very exciting and it was probably her favorite part of the tour. After that we hiked up a hill to make a stop at for some ice cream before heading back to the RV park.
Next up: our adventures in Tennessee. Until then, see you down the road!