Mammoth Cave Caravan, May 4th

OK, as I said before, with the rain and the cold, Cumberland Gap National Park was a bit of a bust. All of us cozied in and pretty much just stayed warm and dry. I was asleep by about 8pm and didn't wake up till about 8 the next morning.

Since most of us did the absolute mininum setup, we were out of there and on the road by about 9am.

Our first stop was in town for McDonalds coffee and/or hot chocolate and gas





Oh, by the way we were now in Kentucky. If you don't know Cumberland Gap is at the corner of Tennesse, Virginia, and Kentucky. You can be in all three states within a few minutes of each other.

There was also a pretty cool tunnel that we went through, but I never got pictures of it.

After warming our bellies and filling our tanks, we were on our way to our next destination:



Once again, the drive for this portion was not all that scenic. But our destination was fun.



This is Sanders Cafe, home to the FIRST Kentucky Fried Chicken opened by Col Harland Sanders























After exploring the museum and having some "Tucky Fried Chicken" for lunch we continued on to our next stop.

Cumberland Falls State Park.

http://parks.ky.gov/...resortparks/cf/

We arrived at the campground and all quickly got set up.







It's kindof hard to see from this picture, but two sites share an electrical and water connection. My water hose had to stretch directly across the firepit. Good thing I didn't want a fire!!













After setting up, we headed over to the visitor center and the falls



























That evening we went to dinner at the lodge



There was a racoon outside the lodge window helping himself to the contents of the bird feeders







A lot of us also lingered in the lodge lobby for the fireplace and the free WiFi. I had LOTS of emails and birthday wishes to catch up on.

Thanks for reading, more coming soon!!!

Mammoth Cave Caravan, May 3rd

May 3rd, about 10am, we pulled out and continued on our drive. By way, for this portion of the journey we are down to 8 of us. The other 5 had to continue home, or onto other adventures.

Today was a short driving day, less than 100 miles and the drive honestly was not fun. It was through downtown Knoxville (in an effort to avoid the interstate). It wasn't even an interesting downtown, just your basic redlight every 100 yards.

This was about the only interesting thing I saw:



We arrived at Cumberland Gap National Park visitor center with a huge threat of rain nearby:



We went inside to check on our campsites and learned that there was another large group at the campground, and that if we wanted electric sites, we needed to get on over. (This was the only campground in our trip that didn't take reservations).

So we all scooted on over to the campground, found our sites and got set up. This is the Wilderness Road Campground in Lee County, Virginia (part of Cumberland Gap National Park) only $17.50 a night for electric.























This was the view out my camper window:



After setting up, the rains came down. We had to go back to the visitor center in the rain to pay for our campsite (if you didn't have cash)



Wandered around there, and settled into the camper for the night with a good book and the radio. I decided to have a couple of pop tarts and a tuna lunch kit for dinner. The cold and the rain and the stressful drive did me in.

More coming soon.