After getting the truck repaired, we waited for the rain to pass and get one more visit in with Bill & Debra before moving an hour south to Mammoth Cave National Park on Saturday. We changed time zones, so we basically got there when we left. Our good luck with weather continued. We managed to get in 5-6 miles a day of hiking/walking for the three days we were there. We passed on the bicycle path this year. As the pictures show, you have to keep a good look out when walking around. We found this deer relaxing under a rock out crop.
It's been five years since visiting Mammoth Cave NP (see May 2011 blog posts). The visitors center and bus stops are completed. The park service mimics a cave in the visitors center which I found nice & educational. The hotel, gift shop and cafe were closed for renovations this time. As we'd walk by the hotel, it looked like they just gutted it and started over. Probably not a bad idea!
We stayed at Cave Country RV in Cave City, KY and found a new restaurant - Bucky Bees BBQ - that opened a week earlier. We highly recommend both! Yep, I continued to eat too much...I mean, we ate there twice in three days!
We cut our planned stay a day short to try to get around another cold front making nasty weather for this part of the country. We drove a long day (for us) up to Indianapolis to a Yogi Bear Jellystone (Passport America RV park) in Knightstown, IN to let the front pass. We then drove our normal three hours to Shipshewana, IN to wait for our trailer service next week in Lagrange, IN
Planned for this stay is getting our bicycles serviced (Donna gets new tires), a front-end alignment for the truck and a couple of Ben's Pretzels. We've noticed a slight drop in daily temperatures since arriving. We'd manged to stay in high 60s to low 80s for daily highs since leaving Gulf Shores, AL until we got to Shipshewana. Today's high was 51 with - we're told - light snow showers. We didn't see any snow, but we had our coats on and the heat pumps are running! Nice to have a working electric fireplace, too!
One last comment before wrapping this post up: Most of the RV parks we're staying at - except the Jellystone in Knightstown, IN - are close to full if not full when we stayed. I don't know if that's because we're following I-75/I-65 travel routes for snowbirds or there's just more people RVing. Since retiring we've routinely followed I-95 - a major north/south RV travel route - in spring, and it'd be hit/miss on whether a RV park would get full or not. But we almost didn't get into Birmingham South this spring because we were so late with our reservation. And unless you have friends or relatives in the Birmingham area, I know of no reason you'd stop and spend a lot of time there (and I grew up in that area!) Even the Birmingham South campground host was trying to figure out why people were stopping there. For the first time in our RV travels, Birmingham South had to put a "No Vacancy" sign & turn people away! Cave Country RV stayed full. Raccoon Valley (Escapees) was approaching full. The KOA in Cleveland, TN got a lot of people the night we were there. We couldn't get into the Holiday Travel Park in Chattanooga because it was full (on a Sunday night no less!) Both overnighters we stayed on I-75 (trip south as well as trip north) were full. I don't know, but it's not full here in Shipshewana. Most RV travel we see here is new stuff being pulled by transport companies. Maybe the weather was warmer south and people started moving earlier? I don't know...
Anyway, that's our week. Everyone have a nice weekend. We plan to! David
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