We didn't get far and Jordan dropped right back into her routine. If you've followed previous versions of these trips, you know Walter and Giraffe (still has done nothing noteworthy enough to earn a real name - not exactly expecting much effort now) have been her companions on every trip. Here they are helping her play with Mom's phone. I'm fully expecting a $15k iTunes bill now.
Once we got moving, we started settling into our roles (mine is to never, ever leave the driver's seat) and before we knew it we saw this sign...
...and immediately thought of this.
A slight digression (yeah, this whole blog is one of those, bear with this one) - as a Michigan grad I did a horrible job of planning this trip. Not only did we drive straight through South Bend, but our return trip has us crossing through the worst state ever. As a countermeasure, I may pick one of these up and wear it as we pass through.
The next few hours were flat, boring, one of the worst stretches of road around. US31 to 465 to 65S is a mind-numbing route, but the most efficient for us. Would it kill the state of Indiana to fill in a pothole every few decades? One suggestion would be to recycle all of the foreclosure signs and use them as a filler (too soon???), but needless to say there wasn't much to see from Michigan to Kentucky.
Once in Kentucky, zany hijinks ensued. We hopped off the highway to start heading toward our Nolin Lake State Park destination, and immediately thought we had made a mistake. The road was one of the narrowest I have ever driven, and had speed limit signs that made us laugh out loud - I nearly went off the road at the first curve marked '45 mph' when we realized it was actually this.
After meeting a few trucks/trailers nearly head on, we quickly learned that the preferred tactic on this road is to drive down the center until you encounter traffic, then slowly meander toward your lane just prior to breaking each other's driver side mirrors off. Here's a shot that doesn't do it much justice...
...but you can probably understand how we picked up a few souvenir branches on the mirror stalks.
After this things got weird. We were following this winding road all through the scenic (hilljack - more on that in a minute) backcountry, when the GPS lady kindly suggested we take a right at the next insection. This one.
What may appear in the photo to be a road felt like a cart path at the local municipal course. It was about a foot wider than the motorhome, and around 2 more bends there was a STREAM RUNNING ACROSS the road. Sorry to go all bro-caps shouting, but this made no sense to us. The pavement on this 'road' was maybe a year old, no lines, and yet here's a stream running across it - it may as well have been a driveway. Here are a couple of shots - there are no shoulders, so we went about 10mph wondering what was going to happen when Tickle from Moonshiners wandered into the road.
Following one of the hills, we roosted a pack of turkey vultures that looked a little larger than a St. Bernard. I was only quick enough on the camera to get a pic of the last one*.
*why yes, nerd, of course that's the Witch-King of Angmar from the assualt on Minas Tirith, not a turkey vulture.
Finally we made it to the campground, and what pleasant surprise. This place is very well maintained, huge sites backing up to Nolin River Lake (not kidding - they couldn't decide), and perfectly level!! No one wants to screw with leveling a motorhome after battling goat paths and the Nazgul, so little things like a level site are worth mentioning.
A quick shot of the site and it was off to the playground.
To top it all off, I found out this park has a mountain bike trail right near the entrance of the campground, so if anyone else is dumb enough to be riding the trail at 7am on a Monday, they're going to get this move (hyperlinked for the mobile crowd) pulled on them. Or not.
Then we're off to Mammoth Cave, or as Jordan said, "are we going to the mancave tomorrow?"
More to come, hopefully the humidity tomorrow is less than the current 100.1%.
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