Mammoth Cave National Park

We are in Cave City, KY at Singing Hills RV Park. It's a nice small park. We have a unique site right next to the barn.

It's a nice long site with nobody next to us.

We don't have the best eastern view though.

We went to Mammoth Cave National Park and took the Historic Tour. It takes you into the big cave.

Here's the entrance into the cave. It was a hot and humid day but going down into the cave it cooled down to 54 degrees.

It's pretty dark inside the cave. 

They only have some small lights on some of the walls.

The tour was about 2 miles long and has 400 stair steps going up and down. Here's Peggy in one of the small rooms.

Tours started in 1816. The cave was privately owned until 1941 when it became a national park.

 Back in the 1800's all the guides were black slaves. Stephen Bishop was one of the most famous guides. The Bradford family guided tours for four generations in the cave and mapped most of it. There are 405 miles of the cave that are mapped.

We did find one cave cricket.

 This photo was in "Fat Mans Misery" a real narrow and low walkway. It was the hardest part to get thru until we got to the stairs that take you back to the entrance. We should've taken water with us, it was a hard walk.

But back in our rolling home Peggy had started our dinner before we left. She made Shantell's soon to be world famous "Creamy Chicken over Noodles" in the crock pot. Oh my God was it good! I have never put a recipe on the blog but I think I have to for this one.

You need:

2 cans of Cream of Chicken soup

1 - 8 oz pkg. of Cream Cheese 

1 dry packet of Italian dressing mix

1 or 2 pounds of boneless Chicken

1 package of Butter Noodles

In a crock pot, mix together the soup and Cream Cheese and Italian dressing. Add the Chicken and cook on low for 4 hours. Cook the noodles and spoon the chicken mixture over them and enjoy.

Thanks to Shantell for this killer dinner. Try it!

We were told this area was a "Dry County"  but it's not. A recent vote changed all that. Having been dry since the 1930's, they were ready to open their first drinking establishment, "The Cavern". The only bar in the whole county is in Cave City. It just opened in March. We had to check it out.

Here's the best bartender in the county! Lenny. The local residents are keeping her busy. It's a nice small place in a historic building in old, downtown Cave City.

Live Happy and Always Go Big.

Camping in the Smokies

We're in Gatlinburg, TN at a small park called Camping in the Smokies. We have a nice big site that looks out to the road. One of the best things about Gatlinburg is that we can use the Reeper to get around.

We're having a little problem with the big truck. When we went to leave Nashville the battery was dead. We called Good Sam road service and explained that our Freightliner needed a jump start.

They sent this guy with a clown car and a jumper box. That was a joke. When I saw him drive up I almost laughed, but it wasn't that funny. He couldn't get us started (surprise, surprise) and he blew some fuses in the truck. So then we called another guy with a huge battery charger and replaced the fuses and of course it was raining the whole time. But the problem came back here in Gatlinburg. The battery went dead again. This time after we got it jump started I took it to the Freightliner dealer in Knoxville. They checked and cleaned the battery and said it's all OK. We'll see. This is the first time we've had any trouble with the truck.

My mom and JoAnn came down to visit us and do some sight seeing.

 We went to dinner at the restaurant just down the street from the park, Crystelle Creek Grill. The food is good there.

Mom, at one of the outlooks in the park. It was a nice visit. That was the first time we have seen them in three years.

We hopped on the trolley and met up with Mom and JoAnn, at  Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies. It's rated as the best Aquarium.

They even have Penguins.

Here's some of the fire damage. There's a lot of fire damage all around town, but very hit and miss. There might be a house burned up and the one next to it wasn't touched. That's kind of strange how that happens. 

We did some Reeper sight seeing up in the mountains. I got new tires delivered to the park for the Reeper and put them on.

 These tires are more street friendly.

Beautiful mountain stream.

I need to go on a little rant. Class A motorhomes are driving me crazy! Why do they have to start their engines and let them run for 45 minutes before they leave in the morning?! We had one in our park in Yuma that had a ritual of at least once a week he would start it up and check all his tires for air pressure and then go NOWHERE! While we were in Tom Sawyer park, one peaceful, nice evening, with lots of people cooking out and watching the barges going by, a guy starts up his class A and just lets it run for an hour! He never even came outside! What's up with that? This is probably the best one of all; we were in Nashville and at 11:30 at night the two Class A's next to me start up their generators! The power in the park is on. Why did they start them up? Then yesterday, a Prevost pulls out in the street right by the entrance to the park and just lets it run for 45 minutes. He then parks his towed truck next to it, now blocking the whole road! The park manager had to come out and tell them to move the truck. What the #ell is wrong with these people?!  Thanks for listening 😏      

Live Happy and Always Go Big.

Music City

We have moved to Nashville, Tennessee! 

We are at Yogi Bear Jellystone  RV park. This park is full of kids and is expensive ($80 a night) that's way over our park budget limit. Sometimes during a holiday weekend you have to do what you have to do in order to have a site. So we're only going to stay a week.

We went downtown on the shuttle that picks us up right here in the park. Round trip to downtown is only $10 each. Now that's a good deal. Make sure you take lots of money downtown as the food and beer ($5.50 a beer) are expensive.

World Famous Tootsies Orchid Lounge! This place is famous as being the place that Willy Nelson first played the song "Crazy", made famous by Patsy Cline.

All the bars downtown have live music.

Peggy having fun.

This band was pretty good, but to see all the bands, one can only have one beer per bar.

Friday we met up with our friend, Shantell Ogden, a Nashville recording artist and song writer, for steak dinner. The next day we went to Shan's house and had a killer lunch.

Here we are hanging out at our rolling home.

Shantell Ogden.
Shan gave us a thumb drive with five albums on it. I can't wait to listen to it. You can listen and check out Shantell's music at www.shantellogden.com  

Shantell is the daughter of our friends, Jeff and Diana from Utah.

We met a new friend here in the park.

Dixie Girl. She is a really nice pup. If you say "Bang" she jumps around and plays dead.

Live Happy and Always Go Big.