(Continued from Part 7)

So, we spent another full day at Fort Massac after the Eclipse, and it was the day that the rain finally came and the heat and humidity broke. Most of the people in the campground also left that morning, so it was a nice quiet day.

We got in some bike-riding and wandering once things cooled down. It did mean that more bugs came out, but we had local volunteers helping us with that.

Our son found a painted rock that someone had left on the (now vacant) site just north of ours. It was really cute, and was a fun find that made our day just that much brighter.

Of course, the sun coming out again after the rain was nice as well.  We made it down to the river again, and walked down to get some Ohio River mud on our shoes.

But as nice as it was to have the cooler weather, we set off the next day fairly early (and as we’d filled up just outside Paducah, we had a full tank to start with) because we were off to hit Mammoth Caves!

It was a wonderful day for a trip, being sunny with some light clouds, and cool enough that I didn’t have to really worry about the engine’s temperature, even though our trip was mostly uphill!  We did see some interesting stuff on our way, though, like the Police Pick-up Truck.  In Buffalo (and as much of New York law enforcement that I’ve seen) SUVs and vans are the only real non-sedan light vehicles, so this was an oddity worth a picture.

The other was the cooling towers of the TVA Paradise Fossil Plant.  Some research after the fact shows that this coal-powered plant,  located just east of Drakesboro, has the largest megawatt capacity of any power plant in the state.  We could see the plumes of steam really clearly from the Western Kentucky Parkway.

We stayed on the Parkway until we got to US231, which we took until we got to KY70, which really got me a bit nervous at first.  I didn’t mind the hills or the curves, but rather the fact that there was really no shoulder to these roads.  Meeting any kind of large vehicle was a sort of test of nerves of jockeying between the ditch and clipping someone’s mirror.  But it was some lovely countryside when there wasn’t any oncoming traffic.

And driving on these smaller roads would end up being great experience for getting to our campsite later that night when it was getting dark.

But finally, we made it to Mammoth Cave National Park. (Which I’ll discuss in Part 9.)