March 17, 2010--Our trip

We had a great time on our trip with the Penners this weekend. They arrived Saturday at noon and spent the night. They attended our church the next day, and after the fellowship dinner we loaded the boys in one van and the girls in the other and drove to Kentucky. The Penners had rented a 2-bedroom unit of a cottage at Nolin Lake Park. The kids slept on sleeping bags and each adult couple took a bedroom. Lisa and I and the vanfull of girls stopped at Walmart on our way in and picked up groceries, since the cabin had a full kitchen.

On Monday morning we went to Mammoth Cave. Our tour was at 10:15 and we took the Snowball Tour. As we were loading the bus, Lisa P. noticed that her youngest son was missing. We looked out and saw him skipping across the parking lot. I don't know where he had gone, but he didn't even see that we were boarding the bus and was heading back towards the visitor's center. That was kind of a heart-stopping moment.

It was a pretty easy tour except for the 183 steps we had to climb to get in and out of the cave. Some of the people on the tour had a difficult time with that. Two park rangers guided the tour and pointed out the various features of the cave, explaining how it all got there. Surprisingly, not once did either of them mention the words, "Billions and billions of years ago." They simply said, "A long time ago." Erick talked to one of them and found that they are Christians. One of the men on the tour asked the guide how long it had been since the river had flowed through it, and the guide said, "Most geologists will tell you about five billion years ago, but I personally don't believe the earth is that old. I'd say it happened no more than eight thousand years ago at the most." It was really cool to not be fed the evolutionist dogma on this trip.

Our tour took us to an restaurant inside the cave. They even had a modern bathroom and drinking fountains down there.

Here are a couple of more photos from the cave tour. I have lots more on Facebook. This next one is of the historical entrance. We entered the cave through a man-made entrance, but before our tour we did a little hiking and saw this entrance as well.

Here are the last few people coming up out of the cave at the end of the tour, after climbing up 183 steps.

We spent the rest of the day watching TV, talking, eating, and resting. Oh, and Lisa Penner picked on me a great deal. She can really be ornery.

The next day we got up early and drove down to the dam with the Penners. They were going canoeing, and so they wanted us to take their van downriver to the place where their canoe trip was going to end so they could drive back to the cabin.

I was glad it was them canoeing and not us, because it was kind of cold. It was very beautiful, though, and I did call them later on the day to make sure they got back safely. No one drowned or froze to death, I am happy to report. We lined up the kids and took pictures before we left for Tennessee, like we always do when we get together with the Penners.

Then we drove on to Tennessee. It took us longer to get to Cade's Cove than we thought it would. At one point we stopped to get some food and Erick got on the interstate and turned the wrong direction and we went about twenty miles out of our way. The weather was chilly and it started to rain. We were starting to think it just wasn't going to work out. Then we found out that Cave's Code Loop Road, the one that you could drive on and see all the historical buildings, was closed because they repaving the roads! We were so disappointed, but we figured we'd see if there was anything we could do since we drove all that way. We asked the guy at the information desk if there were any trails we could go on, and he showed us one that actually went to one of the buildings we wanted to see. Amazingly, the weather wasn't cold anymore, and we decided to hike to it.

After a little bit the trail ended at a stream. We could see the rest of the trail continuing on the other side, but there wasn't any way to cross it. We almost turned back, but then we decided to go off the path upstream a bit and see if we could find a way to cross. We hopped from rock to rock, went around a big fallen tree, and continued on the path. Three more times we had to creatively cross a stream. Some were pretty easy, but others were a lot more difficult and we weren't sure we were going to get across.

Here is one of Rachel and Joy crossing one of the smaller ones. They are going in different directions because Rachel thought it was so much fun crossing the stream, she liked to cross each one two or three times.

Finally we made it to the cabin. It was worth the effort. It was so beautiful there, we all wanted to just stay there.

But we didn't have time to stay long. It was already nearly 5:00 p.m. and we had over eight hours of driving to do until we got home. So we took some pictures and then hiked back.

Erick drove until about 10:30 p.m. while I slept, and then I drove most of the rest of the way home, although he did drive another hour after that when I was getting too sleepy. We got home at nearly 3:00 a.m. I slept in this morning and I haven't done too much yet! It was such a nice trip with a lot of beautiful memories. I wish I could post all of my pictures here, but I've got over eighty of them. You can look at the rest on Facebook if you're my FB friend.