There’s a museum for everything, apparently. Today, after setting up camp near Austin, Minnesota, Greg and I headed to the SPAM Museum.
It was fun. I learned about how SPAM is made, its use by the military, and all the ways people around the world eat it.
Greg tried a sample. He said it was very salty. I couldn’t bring myself to try it.
Tomorrow, we’re headed to Sioux Falls.
Yesterday, we visited Cave of the Mounds in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Before our tour of the actual cave, we walked the Karst View Trail. It took us past a number of sinkholes in the ground. (A karst is another word for sinkhole. More or less. I think.)
Afterwards, we took a self-guided tour of Cave of the Mounds. This is the first time we’ve been in a cave where we did not have a guide. It was nice because we were able to linger over things that interested us and take pictures without feeling rushed.
Unfortunately, cave pictures never come out well. The contrast between light and dark is too extreme.
Therefore, I will not bore you with a bunch of crappy cave pictures. Just trust me when I say that this was a fun and different cave experience.
The weather was actually gorgeous today, so we decided to take a hike.
Wisconsin has been experiencing a lot of flooding in the last week. Consequently, the trail was flooded in a number of places, and we had to turn around and try different routes.
Despite the challenges, we got to see some pretty scenery.
And wildlife!
Next, we headed to the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Middleton is one of the cutest towns I’ve ever seen. I loved it.
We tried a slew of different-flavored mustards, toured the museum, and watched a film about the making of mustard around the world.
Apparently, no visit to Madison would be complete without a visit to see the Pink Elephant. So we did that, too!
The pink elephant has been standing on the site of this gas station since the 1960s. It is not the only pink elephant in the country, but it is the only one wearing glasses.
We finished the day at Drumlin Ridge Winery, where we tasted some wines and enjoyed some snacks.
It was lovely!
In between all of those activities, we managed to make time to see the new Superman movie (it was good but not great), did laundry, went grocery shopping, and did some maintenance on the travel trailer.
This trip has been different from previous trips with the travel trailer because of the amount of maintenance we’ve had to do while traveling.
Greg ended up ordering a new weight distributing hitch for the trailer. It will be delivered to our campground in Sioux Falls and installed before we leave. Not ideal, but hopefully, the new hitch will fix the sway problem.
We’re also having a problem with water backing up into the fresh water tank, so Greg spent some time trying to solve that problem, too.
On to Minnesota!
Ugh. South Dakota is very far away. Greg and I have now passed the 1000-mile mark on our drive out west.
Yesterday, we were in Indiana, so we decided to check out Indiana Dunes National Park. (There is also an Indiana Dunes State Park, but we chose the national park because we wanted to get our national parks passport book stamped.)
It was 90° and humid, so we went in the morning and kept our visit brief. We hiked the Succession Trail off of West Beach. It involved lots of steps and slogs through soft sand. (Not a great thing for Greg’s weak ankle, but he made it.)
On to Wisconsin!
Before we left for our trip, I managed to complete two assignments for my negative painting class with Rick Surowitz.
Although I don’t hate either one, I’d like to give them another try once I get back home.
Yesterday was a weird day. One of my medications, either the Propranolol or the Viibryd (or I guess it could have been the lack of caffeine in the morning), made me extremely tired. I finally dragged myself out of bed around 3:00 p.m., but even then I felt like a zombie.
In a desire to not completely waste the day, Greg and I headed off to Maumee Bay State Park to see if we could do a little hiking.
This is a cute little park right on Lake Erie. It has a fancy lodge, a marina, a golf course, a small inland lake, two beaches, a campground, and a couple of hiking trails.
Greg and I managed to get our steps in, but I felt like my body was still asleep the entire walk. I was glad when we finally headed back to our campsite.
On to Indiana!
After a relaxing morning in which I napped and Greg read, we headed to the Flight 93 Memorial.
I had mixed feelings about touring this site. My memories of 9/11 are still vivid in my mind, and I was reluctant to re-traumatize myself.
That said, I’m glad we went. The site is in a naturally beautiful location. I felt like I was standing on top of the world. There were mountains and meadows as far as I could see.
The visitor’s center did a wonderful job of telling the story of that day. I was both moved and informed. I was reminded again of the heroism of Flight 93’s passengers and how many lives they saved through their actions.
After our tour of the visitor center, Greg and I hiked down to Memorial Plaza and the crash site.
I was surprised to learn that there were only about 40 people on the plane, and they took a vote before storming the pilot’s cabin.
A boulder now marks the spot where the plane crashed, but I did not take a picture of it. It seemed disrespectful somehow.
On our way out of the memorial site, we stopped at the Tower of Voices, where 40 chimes represent the 40 people who lost their lives that day. The wind has to blow at 12 to 15 mph in order for the chimes to ring. We got to hear them briefly as we were walking toward the tower.
Greg made a friend at the base of the tower. This little kitten was basically a skeleton covered in fur, but my, did he have a pair of lungs! I was seriously tempted to take him back to our campsite.
Luckily, another tourist gave him some water and called the Rangers. I like to think that he is in good hands tonight.
In preparation for our epic Western camping trip, Greg decided to change out the friction cone in our hitch. We had been having trouble with the back end of the trailer swaying. Greg thought replacing the friction cone might help.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t get the darn thing out. He tried everything, including all of the suggestions people had on YouTube. Finally, he called the manufacturer for help, and they told him to boil the hitch for 30 minutes.
Weirdly, it worked!
On Saturday we moved Galen to Pittsburgh. He will be sharing an apartment with Neal and Lily and working for Westinghouse, where Neal also works.
It was a grueling day. We had just enough time to unload his stuff before we had to turn around and head for home.
I’m glad for Galen. (At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.) This is a wonderful opportunity for him.
But I’m sad for me. The house feels very empty and strange without him.
As I write this, Greg and I are relaxing at our first campground on our epic Western camping trip. We’re in Bedford, PA, to see the Flight 93 Memorial.
It’s hard for me to believe that the big day has finally arrived. I feel like we’ve been planning it forever.
We are both exhausted. The last few weeks have been frenetic. Hopefully, over the next few days we can begin to recover.
Sigh. Again?
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It is the spring, after all.
Since it was raining yesterday, Greg and I took ourselves off to the movies to see the latest Avengers iteration, Thunderbolts. It was fun.
Today, we took a tour of the Kentucky Derby Museum and Churchill Downs.
A couple of photos from our visit to the museum:
And a couple of photos from our visit to Churchill Downs:
We managed to get into the car before it started raining, but by the time we got back to the campground, it was pouring.
Tomorrow we head to Ohio for our trip back home.
This morning we did our second tour of Mammoth Cave. This one was called the Domes and Dripstones tour.
Oh. My. God. It was awesome.
As usual, my photos will not do it justice. The first section of the tour was of the domes, which are deep vertical shafts.
Once we had gotten to the second level of the cavern system, we entered what our tour guide called the “and” portion of the tour.
Eventually, we arrived at the “dripstones” portion of the tour.
Mammoth Cave is mostly a dry cave, which means that there aren’t that many stalactites, stalagmites, and flow stones, but this section does have them.
I talked Greg into one more cave experience before we leave Park City, Kentucky. So after lunch, we headed to Lost River Cave.
This cave tour involved a boat ride on an underground river. Unfortunately, the cavern was so dimly lit that almost none of the pictures from that part of the tour came out.
Tomorrow we head to Louisville, Kentucky.
This ends the cavern portion of our trip. There is another cavern in Louisville, but Greg refused to take a tour of it. 😆
We are here in Park City, Kentucky, specifically to tour Mammoth Cave. Today was our first of two tours of the longest cave system in the world.
We did the history tour today.
Mammoth Cave is unlike any cave I’ve been in previously because it lacks stalactites or stalagmites — at least the section we saw today. Plus, it’s huge.
It’s almost impossible to get a decent picture in a cave using my camera phone, but here are some of the better shots I got of Mammoth Cave today.
Not all of the areas were wide open. In some places, we needed to duck quite low.
And this area, known as Fat Man’s Misery and Tall Man’s Agony involved squeezing ourselves through a particularly tight section.
And there were steps. Lots of steps!
And deep gorges.
We are staying at a campground right across the street from the entrance to Diamond Caverns, so it seemed like a no-brainer to take a tour there, too.
I have to confess that I enjoyed this tour more than the one of Mammoth Cave. There was so much more to look at.
Sadly, the pictures can’t do it justice.
It was another overcast day with the threat of thunderstorms.
After several days of touring museums, Greg and I were eager to get some exercise. Once the thunderstorm threat diminished, we headed to Shelby Farms Park to walk the Hyde Lake Loop, which is a 2.4-mile loop around a man-made lake near Memphis.
The trail was a little boring, but we enjoyed seeing a variety of birds.
No trip to Memphis would be complete without an evening spent on Beale Street.
After our walk around the lake, we headed to Beale Street for dinner and some live music.
I had read that Memphis is famous for its barbecue, so I did a little Google search to see which bar on Beale Street had the best barbecue, and the winner was BB King’s. So off we went.
As expected, the barbecue was fantastic. Greg and I split a full rack of ribs.
The music was good, too. We learned something interesting about Beale Street. Unlike Broadway in Nashville, where the live music starts as early as 10:00 a.m., Beale Street doesn’t really come alive until after 7:00 p.m.
We were lucky that BB King’s had a band that played from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.
After finishing our dinner, we moved on. Our next stop was the Rum Boogie Cafe, which we had been to once before on our Mississippi Cruise.
Since it wasn’t yet 7:00 p.m., we chatted with a British couple that we met while we were waiting for the band to take the stage. They were also doing a tour of Tennessee before heading to New Orleans, so we had fun exchanging notes about what we had seen and enjoyed on our various travels around the state.
When the band finally took the stage, we were amused to discover that two of the three band members were either from Pennsylvania or Philadelphia.
It was an enjoyable evening, but I have to admit that I don’t feel as comfortable on Beale Street as I did on Broadway. Beale Street has a much grungier feel, partly because there are fewer tourists and more folks just loitering.
Anyway, we headed back to the campsite early because we have a long drive tomorrow.
Park City, Kentucky, here we come!
Meanderings & Mind Munchies 