This is probably my longest blog post but wow! What a week! Not sure how I feel about Kentucky now haha.
Sunday: Early morning to Mammoth Caves national park which is about 30 miles away. Beautiful weather on the surface- high of 70* and sunny. The caves of course do not have weather- they are around 55* year round. Copper and I found a few trails around the visitor center which went by natural entrances to the caves and along the Green River. I fascinated by the river ferry and watched it shuttle cars across the river for a while. After lunch I dropped Copper off at the dog kennel in the park, hopped on the bus and did a 2 hour tour of the caves. Dogs were allowed anywhere above ground but not allowed in any of the caves. Almost 600 stairs brought us down 310 feet below the surface. Even with all those stairs and out a different entrance than we entered we saw less than a mile of the cave system. There are 420 miles of explored caves- the largest in the world but of course we know theres much more out there
still too. It definitely was not the expedition for anyone claustrophobic, afraid of the dark or heights. Lots of narrow passages, ducking your head and squishing or leaning over to continue onwards. What a treasure of a national park! About 5pm a thunderstorm blew in for the evening so I was glad to already be back home 😊
Whats strange is this part of Kentucky is still on central time but it is pretty far East! So the sunsets about 4:30 since we are also approaching the solstice. It rises at 6:45 though. Really wish I was on eastern time already or still on summer time without DST. It doesnt seem like you are able to use the daylight effectively.
Monday/Tuesday: Work and both days I found a local hike which was very ugly and disappointing and made me really question if there was anything pretty in this state... lol
Wednesday: Took the day off work and headed up to Fort Knox for on a day trip group hike. We did 3 trials which were each about 2 miles. Stopped for lunch at a bakery which made very weird sandwiches. I didnt realize we were hiking on
Fort Knox military base until I started to see some fence and signs that were a bit more strict than most hiking trails. We saw some gorgeous waterfalls. There had been a big thunder and rain storm Sunday night and some of Monday and the water was gushing as a result. I also enjoyed conversations with the fellow hikers and got a bit of shock with the strong Kentucky accents lol.
Thursday: The Planetarium at Western Kentucky University put on a dark days of winter free show. Not the best planetarium and was geared more towards people who know absolutely nothing about astronomy (I dont claim to know much but I felt very skilled lol) but still enjoyable.
Friday: Drove to a house that the radio was talking about impressive christmas lights. They were synchronized to music for a 30 minute show!
Saturday: I felt like I woke up in a nightmare. I woke up to 2 severe tornado warnings on my phone telling me to seek shelter at 2 am. I had slept through the town tornado alarm blaring and the entire tornado which passed by only a half mile away. The power was off at
my airbnb and my phone had no cell service. Looking outside it looked as though a storm through but nothing crazy. I had a message from my airbnb host that started with sorry to message to late but if y.... and was cut off and I couldnt read more without data. My airbnb was a converted attic unit part of someones house outside of Bowling Green. Thats right an attic- the worst place to be in a tornado. Not realizing at all what was going on in the world I just packed up my stuff into my car and headed into town to get gas before hitting the road. I got a tiny bit of cell service and sent a picture out of the tornado alert on my phone jokingly saying guess I slept through it- not thinking it was anything.
Not a half mile down the road I started seeing collapsed buildings from trees, roofs blown off and just a disaster scene.
