My alarm went off at 5, and I social media’d for a bit before getting ready for the day. Once I was ready, Nick got dressed and we headed downstairs to breakfast. Thanks to the cop convention, the breakfast area was filled with crew cuts, tactical boots and SWAT team backpacks. Pretty sure the Hampton Inn was the safest hotel in downtown Louisville that week.
Breakfast was…lacking…this morning. We found enough to eat, but it was pretty boring even by free breakfast standards. So it didn’t take us long to eat. We went back upstairs, finished getting ready, and then headed for the car.
I think we were on the road about 8:00. There was a bit of traffic leaving Louisville, but it was nothing compared to the traffic that was heading into the city. Once outside the city limits, it was a pretty easy drive down I-65 to our first stop of the day, the Bernheim Arboretum and Forest.
Yeah, I had never heard of this place either. But as I was busily pinning sites about Kentucky tourism a few months earlier, I’d discovered that the same artist who had created trolls/giants out of repurposed wood, that we had seen at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, had created some giants in Kentucky. This artist is from Denmark and has now created a LOT of these giants around the world. Each one is unique. When I found out there were 3 just half an hour from Louisville, it was a no-brainer to work them into our itinerary.
The arboretum/forest was easy enough to find. We paid the donation and got our map at the visitor center, then went to park at the first parking lot, and walked to the first of the giants.
After spending some time marveling at Little Nis, we hopped back into the car to find the next Forest Giant. There is a walking path that connects all 3, but it’s about 2 miles of walking and we had to stick to a fairly strict timeframe today. So we drove between them as best as possible, to save a bit of time. I say as best as possible because there really were only two places to park for the 3 giants. The other parking area was close to Mama Loumari, so she was our next stop.
After checking out Mama Loumari, we followed the trail to Little Elina. Little Elina was probably a 5 minute walk from Mama Loumari.
Once we’d seen the last two giants, we hopped back in the car and drove back to the visitor center for a quick restroom break, before we hopped back on I-65 south, to finish the trip to our second national park of the trip!
It was about an hour from Bernheim Forest down to Cave City. The trip was uneventful. Nick slept. We changed time zones (Louisville is in the Eastern Time zone) shortly before exiting I-65. Once we got off the highway, we stopped at a Wendy’s drive through for some food before the rest of today’s adventure. Since we’d only be in this time zone for a short period of time, I hadn’t bothered adjusting the clock in my car. Because he’d been sleeping, Nick was very surprised when I asked him what he wanted from the breakfast menu, since my car clock read 11 am, and that’s usually lunch time at Wendy’s.
I had a honey chicken biscuit. I don’t remember what Nick had. We discovered that southern Wendy’s are just as slow at drive through service as northern ones. The food was sufficient to fill us up, and about the best option for the hour of the day, given our current location.
Once we’d car picnicked in the parking lot of Wendy’s, we drove the last 15 minutes or so over to Mammoth Cave National Park. It was a pretty entertaining drive, past some very kitschy roadside attractions. As we entered the national park, though, the drive turned beautiful. It’s very woodsy.
When we got to the visitor’s center parking lot the first thing I noticed was…school buses. Hmm maybe that’s why the 9:30 tour was already sold out…
We headed for the visitor’s center, stopping for the requisite sign picture.
Once inside we had plenty of time to check out the visitor’s center display and eye the merchandise. I decided to wait to make final decisions until we had experienced the cave.
Eventually it was time to head outside to check in for the tour. Here, we discovered that at least one of the school buses was on our tour. That’s right…we had about 60 kindergarteners on our tour. We quickly decided we were going to do our best to always be towards the front of the pack to avoid those shrill voices in a cave as much as possible.
Promptly at 11:30, the park rangers started giving us all the safety warnings and do’s and don’ts, and then we headed for the cave. We were on the historic tour, so we walked down a massive hill from the visitor’s center to the Historic Entrance of Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave National Park offers dozens of different tours, but they weren’t all being offered at the time we were traveling, and this is kind of the classic tour here anyway.
We hiked down the (paved) hill, knowing it was going to be kinda miserable coming back up. The rangers gathered us partway down the hill for one more round of do’s and don’ts, and then it was straight into the historic entrance of the cave!
The Historic Tour takes approximately 2 hours. It covers 2 miles of walking, with half a mile of that being the damn hill to/from the cave. There are 540 stairs to either descend or climb. 200ish of those are in the fire tower by Mammoth Dome. The other large chunk is at the entrance. Most are scattered throughout the cave, a few at a time. My cough had subsided enough that I was fine physically with the entire tour. Nick and I are both in terrible shape, and we both were ok with the tour. And if you read reviews about the tour, he was fine in “fat man’s misery”, so that was good too.
Mammoth Cave was incredible! It’s really impossible to describe just how massive it is. We only saw a fraction of a percent of what is known of the cave system. This was a very cool experience. If I’m ever in the area again, I’d definitely do another tour here to see a different part of the cave system. The rangers leading the tour were great too!
Once we exited the tour, we headed back to the visitor’s center, where purchases were made, and then we headed back to the car, where Nick was suddenly grateful for that annoying squeaky case of water in the way-back of my car to rehydrate after all those stairs. We hit the road, and it was a pretty uneventful 90ish minute drive back to our hotel in Louisville.
Once back at the hotel, we decided where we were headed for dinner and then walked to Main Street. We walked past Doc Crowe’s, to almost the bridge to Indiana, where we turned and headed almost under the bridge, to the Troll Pub. This was another one of my dad’s recommendations.
The Troll Pub was, well, a pub that apparently took reservations. We didn’t have reservations, and supposedly their tables were fully booked, so we were sent to the bar. Service here was efficient, with minimal personality. We had pretzels and beer cheese for an appetizer, which was fantastic. I had a burger, smothered with beer cheese, on a pretzel roll for dinner. Nick had…I don’t remember what Nick had, but it came with tots. He had some sort of bourbon drink and I had a couple fruity beverages. Overall, dinner here was great, with a side of not very personable service.
After dinner, we walked a couple more blocks to Ehrler’s Ice Cream. I had peanut butter and fluff ice cream. Nick had some sort of sundae. The ice cream here was delicious.
Ice cream consumed, we headed back to the hotel, where I showered and crashed hard. I’m pretty sure I was asleep before 8. All that driving had caught up with me!
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