On the Road: Really enjoying southern Kentucky

Mammoth Cave

Since leaving the Clarksville, TN / Ft. Campbell, KY area, we have been riding along a designated bike route on the back roads of southern Kentucky near the Tennessee border. There has been very little traffic and almost all good roads. The riding has been very enjoyable as we wander through the fields and around the lakes. The weather is starting to warm up into the high 80's in the afternoons and the humidity is clearly a factor, but still tolerable.

Yesterday, we took a rest day and visited Mammoth Cave National Park. We took the "Historic" tour, a 2 mile, 2 hour tour of the most popular part of the cave. There are 400 miles of known passages in a 7 mile by 7 mile area, so it is mammoth. I have to say that the parts of the cave that we saw were not all that interesting as caves go. There were no stalactite or stalagmite formations in this part of the cave. I think Carlsbad is much more interesting, but it was well worth a visit while we were in the area.

Our camp site at Hale Hollow State Park

We did some rerouting from our original plan and compressed 4 days of relatively short rides into 3 longer days. This let us finish up today at Hale Hollow State Park which has a really nice campground with RV hookups and tomorrow we will finish in Daniel Boone National Forest at an RV park.

Today was a pretty hilly, 97 mile ride from Franklin, KY to Hale Hollow. (Here is the route) The early part of the ride was through Amish farm country with a number of produce stands along side the road. Beth and I stopped at a "self-service" stand and bought some tomatoes and corn. We looked a little funny with a plastic sack with 3 ears of corn hanging from the front handle bars for about 35 miles. We also took our second ferry ride in Kentucky crossing the Cumberland river at Turkey Neck bend.

Quilt block on a barn

We have seen a number of barns with quilt block patterns on them since we have been riding in Kentucky. We have seen them in other states, but there are no shortage of barns with quilt blocks in this area.

It is hard to believe that we are now at the end of 7 full weeks on the bike, with over 3200 miles logged and less than 2 weeks to go!... and we are still on schedule!

Here are the stats from the trip so far. We've added Nicholas' running miles since he has been on a training schedule since we started.