Bowling Green, KY

Friday, May 11th

We said goodbye to the Mississippi River and to Tom Sawyer Campground and the river bugs. The river bugs would buzz around, particularly at dusk and when it was still. Annoying little buggers although not as annoying as black flies. This marks us turning north and east and starting the slow trek home. We’re getting familiar with I40. We were back on it today. This time heading east back through Tennessee and on into Kentucky. We tried our Garmin RV navigation system for the first time, which worked great, particularly considering we had accidentally set it to car mode rather than RV mode. Oops. But, since I usually have at least two navigation systems going at any time and cross check it against another system which checks for low clearances etc., not the end of the world. But, we figured out our problem and hopefully won’t make the same mistake twice.

We landed at Tailwater Campground, another Corp. of Engineers park on the Barren River Lake. We’re checking in and the woman says “Oh everyone wants the site you’re on. It’s always filled.” Her husband says “The only problem with it is that it’s not level.” Wonderful. Sure enough. It’s not level. We situate the rig sort of in the middle of this sloped bowl. I head off to walk Kya and Gary gets the fun job of trying to level us off. Good luck with that. I came back awhile later and he was still in the middle of it. He eventually got it. The comical part about this site is that we are literally just about 20 feet from the water’s edge. We don’t own the river so people are fishing right in front of our site. It’s a hoot! Gary said “I get to fish without doing any of the work.” We just watch everybody else! Once again this is mostly locals here with their families. At any one time there could be about six or eight “fisher people” in front of our site. Luckily we weren’t hung up on personal space, or lack thereof.

Once again we’ve got a great view at this Corp Park. $20 a night and if we were 62 and older, it would be a whopping $10 a night. Can’t beat it with a stick!

I’ve discovered all Southern accents are not created equal. Kentuckians most definitely sound different than Texans, or maybe I’m just used to Texans. I almost need an interpreter for some of the Kentuckians, not that it isn’t a charming accent!

Saturday, May 12th

We had a leisurely morning then headed off to the Corvette Museum which is located in Bowling Green, which is also where they manufacture the Corvette. They don’t offer any tours of the plant right now but apparently will begin doing that again in 2019. The museum was well done with vintage Corvettes dating back to the 1950’s on up to current times.

It includes an entire exhibit dealing with the sinkhole that appeared in the middle of their museum floor in 2014 and swallowed up 8 of their prized corvettes and made national news. Luckily no one was hurt as this all happened one morning before 6AM. They extricated all eight cars from the sinkhole but most were destroyed beyond repair. They have these on the showroom floor in the condition they were in after they got them up to the surface. A time lapse video shows how they were able to fix the sinkhole. Kentucky in general is prone to sinkholes because of all the caves. Mammoth Cave, which we visited last summer, is only 20 miles from here and is the longest cave system in the world.

It’s very pretty country around here with rolling hills, narrow roads, cattle grazing, and lots of (empty) pastures surrounded by white (or black) fences. We haven’t seen too many horses. Perhaps in Louisville, which is where we’re headed next!