Okay, I'm finally on our last full day in Louisville. Coadster has a goal to see every National Park in her lifetime, so I got tickets for a self-guided tour of Mammoth Cave, which is about an hour and a hlaf drive from Louisville.
We were there the last weekend before they loosened Covid restrictions.
First we did a little hike on the trails outside the cave. I had read there were cool trails and the one we hiked certainly did not disappoint.
We entered the cave at the appointed time. Apparently, It is the longest cave...in the United States? In North America? On this planet? In the universe? I'm not sure, but it's the longest.
I bought my iPhone11 last Fall when the next new model came out and the price went down by half. I was glad I had it in the cave. It has that special feature that as long as you don't move, it will take a decent photo of you when it's dark. We were not allowed to use a flash in the cave, and even though it was hard not to move for the allotted time and some of our pics were a little blurry, it still took way better photos than any other camera we had.
Plus, I could pretend that the blurry photos were me just being artsy.
I had been to Wind Cave in South Dakota, which is also a National Park cave, and Mammoth Cave is way different than that. Mammoth is above the water line, so you don't see things like cave bacon or stalactites, but the ceiling is just gorgeous with all the funky colors of substances used to make gun powder.
After our tour, we headed over to the ice cream place. That is my new favorite thing, getting ice cream after hiking in a National Park. I hope to do that at everyone I go to.
On our way back to Louisville, we headed to Bernheim Forest to see the giant trolls.
We had no idea how beautiful that park would be. There we sculptures and beautiful flowers and ponds with turtles and fish.
There were three giants we could see on a 3/4 of a mile hike. Before we even made it to the first troll, the kids were grumbling about walking much more. John and I are used to working out all the time, but Coadster and her boyfriend were pretty much done. So, we got some fun photos of the first troll and headed back.
We decided to go back to Whiskey Row to find a place to eat dinner. Unfortunately, the problem of finding a table at any of the restaurants that were open was even worse than it had been on Saturday. After about an hour and a half, we found a place that gave us only a half hour wait. We were all pretty tired and hungry and cranky by then which is never a good combination, but we all perked up after we got some food and a beer in us.
We went back to our neighborhood for one last drink before we headed to our place and then left the next morning.
I would have to say our first trip out since Covid began was an all out success. We had a chance to get to know Coadster's boyfriend better and hang out with Coadster for more than a half hour for the first time in a year and a half. We also got out of Iowa and had lovely adventures. I think we all really needed it.
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