Labor Day Adventures

When asked what I wanted to do on Labor Day, a day off from work for both Jon and I, I responded simply with, “I want to go to a park.”  I could offer no specifics.  I just wanted to spend the day outside!  Fortunately for us, we live in a city and state that prides itself on its park systems.  We have a lot of options.  Jon looked at a map and decided that we would try hit up three state parks in one day.  So, off we went.

Our first stop was Taylorsville Lake State Park.  This was my first time visiting the park.  Every time that I had previously mentioned it as a destination, Jon had never seem too enthused.  Now I know why.  Unless you are going with the intent of either boating or horse back riding, the park does not seem to offer some of the activities we enjoy at other parks.  Yes, there are trails.  However, they are mixed use trails that are utilized by those with horses.  Great for them, but not so ideal for hikers.

We drove down to the boat ramp.  The lake is beautiful!  We would love to go back sometime and rent a boat for the afternoon.

After leaving Taylorsville Lake State Park, we headed towards the Lincoln Homestead State Park.  The park features the cabin that Nancy Hank’s, Abraham Lincoln’s mother, lived in when she was courted by Thomas Lincoln.  This is an original cabin, not a reproduction.  It was originally on a piece of property that is about a mile away from the site of the park.

Also located on the park property are reproductions of a home that Thomas Lincoln lived in and also a blacksmith shop.

Roughly a half mile down the road from the park, towards Springfield, is the home of Mordecai Lincoln.  Mordecai was Thomas’ brother.  The home was built in 1797 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  According to an employee of the park, Mordecai’s home was completely renovated about ten years ago.  For a nominal fee of $2, you can tour all the buildings featured within the park.

Earlier this year, Jon and I purchased a Kentucky State Parks Passport book.  If you frequent the state parks, pick one of the books up.  It makes it easy to log your trips and have something to look back on later.  It has also turned into a sort of scavenger hunt for us.  We are trying to visit every state park and have it stamped in our book.  The national park system also has the same sort of book available.

We picked up a stamp for our book at the Lincoln Homestead State Park.  However, because it was a holiday afterall, no one was available to stamp our book at Taylorsville Lake State Park.  With this realization, we elected not to head to our planned 3rd destination of the day.  We are going to go there on a day that we know we can get our passport book stamped.  So, our day ended a bit shorter than we had anticipated, but it was of no concern to us.  It was a beautiful day to just be out driving around with the sunroof out and the windows down.  Fall is right around the corner and soon winter will be here as well.   Get out and enjoy the warm weather while it lasts!

Wild Cave Tour

After several months of anticipation and anxiety, I did it.  I survived the Wild Cave Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park!

The Wild Cave Tour consists of over six miles of cave exploration in six hours.  Jon and I decided to do the tour with our friend Jenni, her husband, her sister, and her sister’s boyfriend.  Jenni and her husband had to back out nearly last minute because they found they are expecting a baby!  So excited for them!  They decided to still make the drive to Mammoth to do some exploring and hang out.

Before the tour started, the group was brought together to be informed about White Nose Syndrome.  White Nose is known to cause death to bats.  Apparently, not a lot is known about it.   In order to protect the cave, all Wild Cave Tour participants were required to wear Mammoth Cave provided jumpsuits and our boots had to be scrubbed down before and after the tour.   Our group was bused over to a cabin where we were suited up and prepared for the tour.  We then boarded the bus again and made the short trip over to the cave entrance.

To say that I was nervous is an understatement.  I am an active person, but I am not comfortable in small places.  I get kind of claustrophobic.   While Jon had been on the tour before, he could not really prepare me for it.  Every Wild Cave Tour is different.  It never follows the same path.

The tour started off fairly easy enough.   A lot of crawling and trying to lift yourself up through tight openings, but it was manageable.  Within minutes though, I was already profusely sweating just from the physical work.  Before I knew it, we had made our way to the Snowball Room.  There is actually a cafeteria style lunch available in this room.  This is the only point during the Wild Cave Tour where you have the option of turning around.  If the first section proved to be too much for you, you could bail at this point.  One person in our group decided to leave.

After the lunch break, we started off on the next leg of the tour.  Very quickly, the tone of the tour started to change.  Our trip just happened to be right after the massive flooding that hit Nashville this year.  Many sections of the Wild Cave Tour were flooded.  Our tour guides did not know which sections were flooded.  They would try to avoid the sections they assumed were flooded only to find more flooding.  They said that it appeared to them that this flood had caused water to be in sections of the cave for the first time in hundreds of years.  They also said that in all probability the water will remain there for years to come.  The water started off ankle deep, but quickly progressed to the point where it was up to my stomach.  For reference, I am 5’4″ tall.  We also had to crawl through sections with standing water.  No pictures as I didn’t take my camera with me.  After discovering the water, it was probably a wise decision.

It was rough!  You couldn’t see the ground below you because of the water.  With each step, you had to be careful as you did not exactly what was below.  I hit my shin really hard on a rock that was under the water.  The jumpsuits were also not very helpful in this situation.  My jumpsuit was rather large on me, so it proved to be difficult when I would try to climb.  It was soaked with water and weighing me down.  I pushed through it though and made it to the end.

Jon and I camped at Mammoth Cave that night.  We had just purchased a new tent, so we were pretty stoked to get back to camp and set it up for the first time.

Worse than the tour itself was the pain I experienced the next morning.  When I woke up in the morning, I felt like I couldn’t move.  Jon had to literally help me sit up.  I was covered in bruises, especially on my arms and legs.  We got ready and headed over to the hotel at Mammoth Cave National Park for breakfast with our group.  Just sitting was painful.

Souvenir Bruises.

If you had asked me then if I would do the Wild Cave Tour again, I would have emphatically said no.  Now though, I would do it again in a heartbeat.  It was the hardest physical thing I have ever done.  It feels good to know that I survived it.

Return to Red River Gorge

For the Perseid meteor shower, a group of friends and I decided to rent a cabin in Red River Gorge for the weekend.  Just over a year ago, our same little group stayed in this same cabin.  So, it was nice to get us all back together and relive it in a sense.

Kentucky was still experiencing record high temperatures.  That combined with the fact that my left foot was still hurting like crazy meant that we pretty much stuck around the cabin area and did not do any hiking this time.  I would find out just a few days later that I actually still had glass in my foot.

I didn’t want to spend the whole weekend cooped up, so after a Saturday lunch at Miguel’s Pizza, Jon and I decided to head over to Natural Bridge State Park.  Since my foot was still in pain, we paid the $9 each (!) to take the sky lift up to the top of the bridge.  It was worth the $9.   The website for the sky lift states its an 11 minute ride up and an 11 minute return trip.  I’d say that is close to being accurate.

Skylift to the Top

The scenery to the top was beautiful.  I have a tendency to become a bit nauseous when it comes to heights.  The last ascent had my stomach turning a bit.  Steep!

At the top, we hiked just a short distance over to the top of the park’s namesake.  This was my second time visiting the park and the views were just as amazing to me as the first trip.

After spending some time there, we hiked over to the other overlook point.  This point can actually be seen in the second to last picture posted.   I love this area because it is always so windy!  It makes me feel even more rumbly in my chest when I peek out over the edge!

It was then time to make our way back to the parking lot.  We got back on the sky lift and started the 11 minute trip down.

We made our way back to the cabin to prepare and enjoy a delicious dinner with our friends and settle in for the night.  I love going to Red River Gorge.  Its so peaceful and laid back that the weekend seems to go on forever.  I can’t wait until we get the chance to go back again.

Our Group at the Cabin

Bernheim Forest

Even though I have only been there twice, Bernheim Forest holds a special place in my heart.  I love the lakes, the flowering trees, the various gardens, the prairie and the Canopy Treewalk.  Its a very peaceful and relaxing place to spend an afternoon.

Jon and I headed there with hiking on our minds.  Bernheim has several hiking trails, but most are very short in distance.  Then, there is the Millennium Trail which is 13.3 miles in length.  We were not up to that one on this day, so we decided to go with the 2.0 Jackson-Yoe Loop.

Trail head.

Right near the beginning of the trail, out of nowhere we encountered two clearly spooked dear.  They were charging straight at us at full force.  Jon started snapping his fingers loudly and just as the one deer was about two feet in front of us, it quickly steered to the right falling down in the process.  We both stood there kind of in shock.  You see deer on trails all the time, but this was intense.  The deer had been in a section where the trail was on three sides of them.  They must have heard other people and jetted in a different direction which just happened to be where we were on the trail.

The rest of the trail was not nearly as exciting.  I’m sure this trail is beautiful when all the trees and grass are green, but right now, everything is still a dull brown.  This trail is listed on the trail guide as being one of the more strenuous trails in the Forest.  There were a few inclines that were difficult, but nothing major for most people.

The entire trail is clearly marked.  Bernheim has gone to great lengths to make sure no one is going to get lost on this trail.  At some points, it seemed like nearly every tree along the trail had been marked with a white piece of paper with a nail through it.

After finishing the hike and enjoying a quick lunch in the picnic area of the park, we headed over to the Garden Pavilion and surrounding area to enjoy the flowering trees that appear to be in full bloom.

Jefferson Memorial Forest – Red Trail

Another weekend, another hike.  This time Jon and I headed back to Jefferson Memorial Forest as we were already out and about in that part of Louisville.  I didn’t bring our trail maps with us, so we stopped by the Welcome Center to decide on our itinerary for the afternoon. We decided to give the Red Trail in the Horine section of the park a whirl. After obtaining our permit for the Horine section from a very nice volunteer worker, we got back in our vehicle and took the short drive to the parking lot for the hike.

The map for this area lists the Red Trail as being strenuous and I would definitely agree with this rating.  The first half of the hike is on rather flat ground and easy to traverse.  Jon and I even commented to each other about how easy and frankly boring the trail had been up to this point.  Then, the portion of the trail that deserves the strenuous rating kicked in full force.  There are two main sections where you are going up hill for a good distance.  The first one may or may not give you some issues.  The second section is rough.  Standing at the bottom of this section, the trail appears to go straight up.  In comparison to the longer and also strenuous listed Siltstone Trail at Jefferson Memorial Forest, I found this trail to be much more challenging for me.  Yes, it was a shorter distance.  However, the inclines seemed to be a bit more dramatic and made me push harder.

After hiking the second incline, you have the choice of continuing the trail back towards the parking lot or taking a brief detour to see the Horine family cemetery.  From this point on, the trail is mostly flat and easy to complete.  The hike took us a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes to complete from beginning to end.

Weekend Trip

Four states in three days.  Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.  Jon and I have been wanting to go to City Museum in St. Louis for quite awhile now.  Weekend trips had been planned several times and fell through for various reasons.  But, we finally made it happen.  Punch Brothers were playing a show in Paducah, Kentucky.  We decided to make a weekend trip out of it.

We left early Friday morning headed to St. Louis.  We checked in to our hotel and then jetted off to City Museum.  If you have never visited the museum, you need to go!  Floor after floor of complete insanity and fun for kids of all ages.

7 Story Slide inside of City Museum!

After leaving the museum, we headed down the riverfront to visit the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.  Home of the Gateway Arch.  Being chilly outside, we quickly made our way to the underground entrance to the arch.   The tram ride to the top was adventure in itself!   Although the view is amazing, the top of the arch is a bit underwhelming due to the small size of the viewing windows.  We happened to be there on a clear day, so we were able to see quite a bit of downtown St. Louis.

A view from the top of the Arch's shadow.

Saturday morning, we checked out of our St. Louis hotel and headed towards Paducah, Kentucky.  Just before crossing into Kentucky is the town of Metropolis, Illinois.  In 1972, DC Comics pronounced Metropolis as the official home of Superman.  Metropolis is a small town that has definitely tried to take advantage of its name.  A huge statue of Superman can be found right in the middle of Metropolis’ downtown area.  Directly across the street from the statue is a Superman memorabilia museum.

Saturday night found us at the Punch Brothers show at the Carson Center in Paducah.  Great show and a great venue.

On Sunday morning, we headed back towards Louisville.  We stopped in the town of Murray to meet up with a friend for lunch.

800+ miles and four states in our new car.  Another great weekend!

Happy New Year!

I’m looking forward to the new year. The past year consisted of a lot of ups and downs for me.  It was definitely a year that saw a lot of changes in my life.  I’m a stronger person for it.  I’m happy to say that 2009 ended on a positive note.  I have never felt so excited about life and what it holds for me.

To celebrate the start of a new year, some friends and I rented a cabin in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky.  We left Louisville late Thursday afternoon and stayed at the cabin until Sunday.  This was my second time visiting Red River Gorge.  The first trip was back in May.

The cabin this time was a bit bigger as we had seven adults and four dogs in our group.  To our surprise, the cabin was a lot more posh.  Stainless steel kitchen appliances, beautiful floor to ceiling windows, a pool table, and even a Christmas tree!

On Friday, New Years Day, Jon and I headed out to Natural Bridge State Park for a bit of hiking.  Being my first trip to the park, it was exciting for me to see the natural bridge in person.  However, not exciting was the fact that it freezing cold outside.  I had worn gloves, thermals with a another layer of clothes over them, and a jacket but was still cold.  My fingertips constantly felt numb from the cold.  It was definitely worth the small hike though.  We took the short Original Trail on our way up to the Natural  Bridge.

For our descent back down the mountain towards the parking lot, we chose to take the Devil’s Gulch trail which then meets back up with the Original Trail.  Probably not the wisest decision.  Devil’s Gulch consists of stairs and A LOT of them.  Stone stairs.  Wooden stairs.  Both types were iced over.  It made for an interesting hike.  I’m not the best on ice, but I only fell once.  I consider this a success.

On Saturday, Jon, Johanna, Beth and I took a drive around Red River Gorge taking in all of the sites that do not require much hiking.  Mostly scenic overlooks.

Johanna, Me, and Beth at one of many scenic overlooks. Windy! Immediately after this shot, we ran back to the truck.

Jon and I at yet another scenic overlook. One of my favorite pictures ever. Thanks to Johanna for taking it!

We came back to the cabin and watched the snow fall for the remainder of the day.  Part of me wanted for us to get snowed in and not be able to head back to Louisville the next day.  The smart part of me knew that would be bad as we would have had to pay for an extra night at the cabin.  Still, I wasn’t ready to leave.  It was a great extended weekend trip!  I’m already looking forward to returning to the area at some point this summer.  There are several trails in the Gorge that I would love to try out next time.

Siltstone Trail

Found along the Siltstone Trail

This past Saturday, Jon and I hiked the Siltstone Trail at Jefferson Memorial Forest with a group of friends.  The trail is 6.2 miles one way.  It is rated as being strenuous.  It is not a loop trail unless you are up to hiking 12.4 miles.  We had been wanting to hike this trail for a bit as it is one of the longer trails in the Louisville area.

As we are in November now, the leaves have started to fall from the trees.  The trail was still easy to follow, but the leaves could be slick when going downhill and also covered up rocks and branches that were on the trail.  There are several areas of elevation change on this trail.  Up and down, up and down, repeat.  We started our hike from the Scott’s Gap parking lot.  The first climb had all of us catching our breaths.  The good thing about this trail is that just when you think you can’t climb any further, the trail flattens out for a stretch.  Our group kept up a good pace throughout the hike and we finished it in roughly four hours.  On a personal note, I had really thought this trail was going to give me some difficulties.  At the end of the trail, the back of my legs were burning a slight bit.  However, I still felt like I could hike at least another mile or two.  I would really like to go back and attempt to make this hike a loop.

Scott’s Gap Red Trail

Jon and I decided to take advantage of the comfortable weather yesterday by taking a trip out to Jefferson Memorial Forest.  We looked at the trail maps ahead of time and made the decision to hike the Red Trail in the Scott’s Gap section of the forest.  The Red Trail is a 3.0 mile loop that also has a 1.25 mile shortcut loop available.

Trail Head

This was both Jon and I’s first time hiking this particular trail.   The trail was very easy to follow and the red blazes along the trail were highly visible.  The trail map lists this trail as being of moderate difficulty and I would say that assessment is accurate.  There are a few up hill sections that may give some hikers a difficult time.   We could hear what appeared to sound like rounds being fired at Knob Creek.

Just past the halfway point of the 3.0 mile loop, we came across a peculiar site.  An old, rusted out car was right off the side of the trail.

Jon and I are planning on returning to Jefferson Memorial soon, weather permitting, to hike the 6.2 (one way) Siltstone Trail.

Lincoln Memorial at Waterfront Park

Back in early June of this year, the Lincoln Memorial at Louisville’s downtown Waterfront Park was officially opened.  The site is designed to detail the life of Abraham Lincoln, particularly his Kentucky roots.  There are four bas-relief sculpture  that show Lincoln at various stages of his life.  The stone was chipped away to make for a 3D appearance.  A stone amphitheater was created that features quotes by Lincoln.  The centerpiece of this section of the park is a 12 foot statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting on a rock facing towards the river.  The statue and the four bas-relief sculptures were created by noted Louisville sculptor Ed Hamilton.  If you haven’t checked out this section of Waterfront Park yet, make the effort to do so.  Its a wonderful addition to the park.

Lincoln Memorial at Waterfront Park

Ed Hamilton's 12 foot Abraham Lincoln Sculpture