Turning for Home and Hansel's Big News

 

Thanks to this forecast, we decided to cut the trip short and head for home for the 4th of July instead of Shenandoah. We'd already survived some rainy nights in Lexington and weren't really looking forward to two days of weather that we couldn't go hiking in or have a campfire. Why go camping if you can't do those two things?! They're the best part!

So we took the scenic route home through Charleston, WV and took an even more scenic detour to see the New River Gap in southern West Virginia. I'd always seen pictures of it but had never made the trek while I was in Morgantown. As with most of our trip, pictures don't do it much justice but it is absolutely gorgeous. Plus, the drive down there is full of stunning scenery!

Charleston

Gauley River

The bridge! Yes we drove over the river on it!

The New River

 It was a marathon driving day, but we had some beautiful views and got to at least drive by Shenandoah on our way through Harrisburg. We got back to Bethesda pretty late, but we were very excited to be sleeping in a real bed! With air conditioning! In a room we could stand up in!

The biggest excitement of the day came when we were actually still in Lexington. While perusing the toy wonderland that is Cracker Barrel, I found another Hansel!! 

 Byron the Brontosaurus was hatched in my parents' kitchen a few days later. Hansel is adjusting well to his new dino sibling.

 

A Day In Horse Paradise

Since the campground is right next door to the Horse Park, we had much less trouble finding it in the morning! The rain had held off but it had yet to get blistering hot, so we set off for a day full of horses. 

I didn't realize how poorly I had hidden my horse addiction until my recent high school reunion. I thought everyone would be pleasantly surprised that I ended up working with horses. I was an expecting an "oh, cool, so you're still riding!" or something similar. Instead, not a single person was even remotely shocked that my life still revolved around horses. The overwhelming response was more along the lines of "well of course you work with horses!"

Billy met me when I still worked in a barn everyday, often waking up before sunrise to voluntarily run around with horses all day, so I like to think he knew what he was in for. A year later, he's still with me, despite me dragging him to the barn in all weather at all hours and my (annoying?) ability to relate every topic of conversation back to horses.

I'm not sure if Billy envisioned 4-5 hours of horse action that day, but as usual, he gamely went around to every horse attraction with me and made sure we didn't miss any of the demonstrations I'd mentioned wanting to go to. He let me pick our (extensive) route around the Horse Park, and even hiked all the way out to the Alltech Arena and Rolex Stadium with me! He took a million pictures and videos and wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I don't want to be one of those people waxing poetic about their fantastic signficant other, but he really deserves some recognition for spending the entire day watching me ooh and ahh at seemingly endless horse attractions. I mean, come on, I even dragged him to the Kid's Barn for the Mare and Foal show so I could see a baby horse up close!

Even better...it was a mini baby horse!!

Skip, seen above with his mom, put on a hilarious show for us. He was feeling quite frisky and while I fully acknowledge his behavior would be terrifying if he was a normal-sized horse, since he's the size of a Golden Retriever, it was hilarious. There was a lot of pint-size bucking, rearing, and attempts to trot away from his handler.

After the Kid's Barn, we headed over to the Horses of the World barn which houses a ton of different breeds, many of which I'd actually never heard of. Billy spotted the "horse riding" attraction, which I thought may involve an actual pony ride, but we walked in to these fantastic contraptions:

Naturally, we both eagerly stuffed quarters into them to experience the wonders of trotting and cantering on a mechanical horse!  

From there, we visited the Big Barn, one of the largest (if not THE largest...I can't remember!) indoor barns that was used as an auction house when the grounds of the Horse Park were still a Standardbred farm. 

Billy makes a friend

Laura the draft horse!

One of the highlights of the day was visiting the Hall of Champions, where we got to see famous racehorses Funny Cide and Cigar, among a few others. It's funny how ordinary they look now that they're fat and retired!

Funny Cide

Cigar

After the Hall of Champions, we returned to the Horses of the World to watch the demonstration, which included a Paso Fino, a breed from Puerto Rico with exceptionally tiny (and allegedly comfortable) gaits.

One of our last stops was the iconic Rolex Stadium, followed by Man O War's memorial. Billy took some fantastic shots, so I'll let them take it from here!

Mammoth Cave and Our Arrival in Kentucky!

Mammoth Cave is only about an hour and a half north of Nashville, and while driving through rural Tennessee and Kentucky may sound awful, it's actually quite scenic. Maybe we just have an odd fixation on farmland, but we continually "ooh-ed" and "ahh-ed" at the seemingly endless fields of grain and corn. This is the only picture I have that comes even remotely close to doing it justice:

 Hansel, Billy and I arrived at Mammoth Cave by late afternoon for our tour. Mammoth Cave has over 400 miles of passages (that have been discovered) and is the largest cave system in the world. Billy had been there on a childhood trip with his mom and older sister and although he didn't remember much of the trip, he was eager to go back.

Hansel and me at the park entrance

I've never been in a cave before and as the park ranger rattled off all the required warnings about stairs, claustrophobia, bat diseases and cave rescues, I was admittedly a little nervous. 

Walking into the cave (and pretty much the entire experience) is hard to describe. It truly is mammoth, especially when you first walk in and it opens up into the gigantic underground rotunda. It's like being in an Indiana Jones movie. At the risk of sounding extremely cliche, it's hard to believe your eyes. 

I got over my cave fears within a few minutes of being in the cave. It's a little bit of group influence, I think....if all these old people/little kids/out of shape people can get through this cave then why can't I?! It was an amazing experience and I have to give Billy a ton of credit for coming up with this awesome idea.

Our park ranger guided tour was also excellent. For anyone considering Mammoth Cave in the future, we took the Historic Tour. Obviously, this discusses the history of the cave, which was much more interesting then it sounds. At some points, we were over 300 feet underground--it's hard to believe that people just went down in there to see what they could find with just a lantern! We were spoiled by the railings and lighting (although still dim) provided by the lovely park service :)

Because the cave is so dim, none of our pictures really turned out. So, I present you with a professionally taken picture of the rotunda! It still doesn't really capture how incredibly gigantic the room is! 

Since I'm sure you're all dying to see pictures of Billy and me (the best part of every post...right?!), here are some of us looking really excited to be in a giant cave!

One of the best parts of the cave was getting a break from the heat! It was nice and cool underground, which was a welcome break from the over 90 weather we'd been cooking in all weekend!

Mammoth Cave was another awesome experience and our first stop in Kentucky (besides the drive thru Panera we ate at on our way to Nashville). I would definitely do it again, especially to go see one of the more geology-focused tours. The cave also has plenty of stalactites/stalagmites that were part of a separate tour (Frozen Niagra, if you're interested).

From Mammoth Cave, it was full steam ahead to Lexington. You didn't expect me to go a full two weeks without something horsey did you?! Since Billy is truly a saint, he agreed to not only go to the Kentucky Horse Park with me but also to camp there! 

The first lesson we learned about the Horse Park is that you should not shut off your GPS and simply trust Kentucky signage to get you there. As the sun set, my child-like excitement over seeing horses everywhere and streets named after racehorses began to fade. Thanks to road construction and woefully absent signage, we managed to drive by the horse park numerous times until we finally pulled into the campground around 10 pm.

This is Billy realizing he is dating a crazy horse person.

In yet another camping victory for me, I set up the tent in the dark all by myself! Headlamps are fantastic and a lifesaver, even if I look completely ridiculous. Billy always looks outdoorsy and mountain man-like in his camping gear. I envy him. 

We quickly realized that the Horse Park uses the word "camping" pretty liberally. There is a bath house with showers, a pool, playground, tennis courts, and a trash can at the end of everyone's driveway at their camp site. Everyone also uses RVs.

Our lone tent in the sea of RVs the next morning

By the time we had eaten random snack foods to satisfy our hunger and set up the tent, it was late enough that we went straight to bed. The forecast was ominous for the next 48 hours, so we crossed our fingers the tent wouldn't flood and got plenty of rest before our Tour de Horses the next day!

Two Days in Nashvegas

We broke camp EARLY to get into Nashville for our 10:30 Walkin' Nashville tour with Bill DeMain. It was an early morning, but as I mentioned in the last blog, completely worth it. Bill gave us a phenomenal tour with a ton of very cool stories. He was our very first impression of the city (we drove in, parked the car, took a pit stop in a nearby Double Tree and booked it to the tour starting point with seconds to spare!) and he couldn't have done a better job. 

Bill is a journalist who has lived in Nashville for over 20 years, so he had an endless amount of stories to tell us about the legends of Music City. We learned the history of country music and it's founding stars and visited several Nashville country music landmarks, including the Ryman Auditorium, the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, Hatch Print Shop and more!

Bill was an excellent story teller and a self-proclaimed music nerd, so Billy and I were hanging on his every word trying to soak in everything we could. We were the nerdy people up front walking right next to the tour guide and asking a million questions. Don't judge.

Quick aside--Bill had asked us where we were from when we first walked up the tour and I answered for both of us. Later on, when we were chatting with him between stops, he asked Billy what it was like growing up in India. Apparently, I tend to slur the last syllables of Indiana, and Bill thought that Billy was legitimately from India. Oops!

Anyways, the tour was awesome and if you ever go to Nashville, you should absolutely go on Walkin Nashville! Tickets are super cheap, we would have paid double for the quality we got!

Billy and I with Bill outside of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge!

Printer's Alley

Bill doing what he does best!

Stage in the back of the Ernest Tubb record shop

Hatch Show Print

Check Facebook for more thorough tour pictures and descriptions of our stops :)

Bill set us loose on Nashville right around lunchtime, so Billy and I made a beeline for the burger place recommended to us by the couple we met in St. Louis. They definitely knew what they were talking about--Gabby's was delicious! It's a small blue shack looking building in the middle of an industrial park-type area, but we knew we'd come to the right place when we saw the line out the door. 

The burgers were amazing (and were made with grass-fed beef!) as were the fries (don't worry, we tried both sweet potato and regular!) and the chocolate milkshake. 

Once we checked in to the apartment we rented from airbnb.com (Thanks Bethany!), we slipped into a pretty heavy food coma/travel hangover. We'd gotten up at 5:30 and had been going non-stop since, so we were exhausted by the time we had unpacked the car and finally showered.

Refreshed from our afternoon of napping (vacationing is really hard, guys), we set out for a night on the town. My favorite part of Nashville is that every bar has live music--every single bar you go to has a band playing. And it's country music, what could be better?!

Billy and I barhopped our way around Nashville, enjoying plenty of bands along the way! We could certainly see where the city gets its nickname of "Nashvegas" from. Lots of neon lights, bachelorette parties (seriously, we saw at least ten different ones each night) and plenty of rowdy people :) Broadway is the main street of touristy attractions, 80% of which are bars. 

The last bar we went to, Honky Tonk Central, had two open upper floors with balconies overlooking Broadway, which was very cool! It was still plenty hot out that late, so we enjoyed some beers, country music, and great people watching before calling it a night.

Nashville Day 2 stories (and Hansel!) are after the break!