Kentucky: a memorable and multifaceted experience!

 Greetings dear friends! Continuing on down south we go to the land of Daniel Boone! We left Ohio early in the morning and arrived safe and sound to Kentucky, the land that houses dear friends and one of our most enjoyed attractions: Ark Encounter & the Creation Museum.

The campground we stayed at this time Northern Kentucky gets the award for the best, most memorable playground..according to the kids. I think it was mostly because they hit it off with the many little ones that were camping there during our stay. There was a family with kids, always playing outside. And the grandma would stay out making crafts with the little ones. Michaela was delighted to be able to partake on that! As I always say, it’s not so much the place or the activity, but the company which makes the memories the more enjoyable.

With that said, let’s start our recount of events with the brightest of all of our stay in Kentucky. Meeting up our dear friends Matt and Katie. We’ve been friends since before our progeny came, and now it was so much fun to see all the kiddos together. Their five and our four, from a two to all the way to a thirteen year old, certainly made a quiver full! We were delighted to spend a full day together.

We met with the Parris at the Ark Encounter. Making the most of the cool morning, we decided to let the kids explore the zoo together before hitting the main attraction: The Ark. We have visited before and totally recommend it. However we have to admit that it was a little more crowded that we expected. It was a little challenging to navigate it with all the little ones. We did as much as we could, but certainly not with as much detail as we have before. It was fun nonetheless. Putting crowd management aside (Blame this guy Summer) They have done an excellent job putting this attraction together. We love letting our kids explore the exhibits and learning about God’s creation in such clever, realistic and fun way.

We spent a good time in the playground letting the kids play while we satisfied our craving for catching up with the family happenings of both households. So grateful for friendship. Specially for friendships that encourage you to stay the course in the path the Lord has set before you. We all need friends that encourage us to walk in God’s ways as we endeavor on bringing up these wonderful little people He has entrusted us with to carry on His purposes..so we spent lots our our day just talking and encouraging one another other. What a delight. After enjoying dinner together we parted ways with our friends, wishing each other well and hoping for future visits.

The next day we went to the Creation Museum. What a learning camp! So fun..for a family of “Geek wanna be’s” like us. I am not sure it this was a new feature, but we hit the lottery by going on a day when they had a complete day of seminars to attend. We were stoked! Some of the fascinating subjects we learned about were “Creation and Race Theory”, “How to be good stewards of God’s Creation”, “The Golden Ratio”, “Color, Light and Beauty Theory”..This is an amazing museum. It has so much to learn from every corner, and inspiration for a myriad of stimulating, insightful conversations. We’d love to talk to you about what we learned. Ask us! Dave, our Math and science enthusiast, actually takes the kids to a local monthly creation club. He loves talking about these things! We also enjoyed strolling through their outstanding gardens before we said goodbye.

We departed the following day and on our way south we made a fun, quick stop at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. We were blessed by friends arranging a campus tour for us. So grateful. It was fascinating to learn about one of the biggest seminaries of the world! Their campus was certainly beautiful. We got to hear about its rich history and legacy, which included Billy Graham’s endorsement and founding on one of their main faculties. This school was founded in 1859 and has been providing robust Bible training for men and women interested in a lifetime of service and engaging the culture with the gospel. It turns out they don’t only have pastoral degrees, but a wide variety, from Business to Media, teaching, counseling, etc. Which is great, because spreading the gospel in all spheres of society is the only way to bring transformative healing to our decaying world. I’m definitely keeping a mental note for the time when we need to start thinking college training for our kids. That sounded like a plug right? Ha! Surprisingly enough, they are competitively priced and offer a flexible format..Worth to look into. “Ok, but for now, let’s enjoy this season and let’s move on to our next stop” said the staring eyes of my kids..Who would've thought  that Evelyn would be running on their lawn one day. Sigh.

We arrived to Mammoth Cave National Park on the same day. Ready for a chuckle? Here’s another one of those tales we are bringing with us to laugh about..later. It was not very fun at the moment. Turns out we decided to book inside of a Nat’l park at least once. We knew the site wouldn’t have sewer, which is quite normal for such campgrounds. What we didn’t know about was the missing dumping station! In RV life no dumping station means limited access to water. That, with the aggravation of the absence of bathhouses, the state of the poorly maintained owl-house and a very sketchy internet signal made the whole experience feel pretty much like primitive camping. And friends in all honesty, if we were to plan such experiment, we wouldn’t have planned it towards the end of our trip. It took a lot of work to run our days. We had to drive & pay to take showers, embrace the bug..ehem, owlhouse for emergency potty..or take long walks, wash dishes outside, etc. We reminisce our tent-camping days, except we don’t remember staying in such primitive facilities, even then.

OK, enough of lows. Let’s go to the highs. The Cave system at Mammoth Cave was just fascinating! Driving there everyday took getting our truck in a ferry, which was an experience on its own. Once there, we took the family on an initial exploratory hike the second day. It was nice to learn about all the legends surrounding the discovery of the site. A few interesting facts are that this is the longest cave system in the world! There are they are new passage ways and features still being discovered today. Another interesting fact was that Mammoth Cave was used to mine for something called “Saltpeter” which was the raw material to produce bullets during the civil war. The park transitioned into a touristic destination shortly after the end of the war.

We got to go on some hikes over the cave system, which was quite interesting as well. The topography of the area is made out of bunches of sinkholes which cover the plains resembling the outside of a golf ball. That makes sense, given the fact of the cave system right underneath. 

The third day the kids went on a “Children’s Trog tour”. Trog stands for “Troglabite” which is a creature who spends its life in a cave. They learned about “spolonking” which is a fancy word for exploring caves. They climbed through small holes, used ropes, explored with a group of kids, saw bats, etc. they visited special features inside the caves with interesting names matching their shapes. One of their favorite spots inside of the cave was the “Hot dog roll” where they crawled through a stretch where ground and ceiling were close together. Other interesting names they mentioned were the ‘Ball Room”, ‘The Spaceship”, “The Dark Room”, etc. This was one of their favorite activities in the whole trip.

Dave also went on a Cave tour called: “History tour”. It was a true highlight for him too. We couldn’t go along with him, because the tour is so sought after that tickets were sold out. We are grateful he got one. He told us about his adventures wearing a headlight, going through many passage ways, hopping over really deep pits and climbing over very large vertical shafts. I guess he got his own “Indiana Jones” experience. His favorite exploring spots were the “Fat Man’s Misery” and the “Tall Man’s Agony”. I’m laughing as I type this, but these are his words, verbatim. These places get their names from describing the experience of what it takes to go through these small sections of the cave. It takes serious squatting, so you are out luck if you are fat or tall I guess. However, the views are so worthy and fascinating, that there were about 100 people on this tour, which sells out daily. Isn’t that something?

Amazingly enough, we closed the chapter of Kentucky with a smile on our face. We passed the test of primitive camping in spite of our weaning energy, everybody is bringing lots of great memories from visiting the caves and from spending quality time with old friends. I say it was a winning stop in spite of the challenges. So grateful for your prayers. We have just two more stops before arriving home. Yay! Atlanta is next, so we’ll post our next update from there!

Inching our Way Back Home

Inch by inch friends, we are moving south inch by inch! We arrived to "Ohian" lands safe and sound, taking an overnight break at Geneva, Ohio, just about 4 hrs away from Niagara. We’ve learned that breaking the driving distances makes it more manageable for a family trip this long. Dipping into Lake Erie for a little bit was fun and refreshing before getting a restful evening in preparation for our drive to our main stop in Ohio: Hocking Hills. 

Dave loves this State Park. We stayed at Campbell’s Cove RV park, which was great. Beautifully maintained, stuffed and designed. They get our “Best bath house family award”. Their swimming hole and beach were also fantastic! The site was located in Logan, not far from the State Park. We chose it because the full hook ups and the nearby restaurant, including the Olde Dutch Restaurant which is a family buffet our family loves, our pig out place in Ohio. 

Visiting Hocking Hills was great. The first day we went on to check out some of its main attractions: The Canyons. The biggest and most popular being Old Man’s cave. It is a beautiful hike down the canyon. You get to enjoy incredible views in this hike. Trees growing out of rocky cliffs and defying gravity, water trickling down from many different corners, the zigzagging river at the bottom, scenic bridges and staircases. It was quite an experience!

We also got explored "Whispering Cave" which was the longest hike we went on this park, It was quite scenic, but moderately strenuous. So we called that a day.

One of the brightest highlights of this stop is that we actually got to meet Dave’s extended relatives who live in the area for an impromptu family reunion. Most of them we had not seen in many years, so it was lovely to reconnect, catch up a little and make memories pigging out together. Ha!

The next day we went to Cypress Falls where we enjoyed the waterfalls and reminiscing our visit about 5 years before. It’s amazing to look at the pictures and see how much the kids have grown. Look for yourselves! It was quite heartwarming to bring Evelyn with us now. She enjoyed this stop very much, because there were butterflies flying around. I guess they were part of the welcome committee!

2018

2018

2023

One of our favorite attractions in Hocking Hills is the disc golf courses. The one we chose was nestled among hilly terrain, so it’s beautiful for us to spend a day enjoying the beauty of nature while working on perfecting our aim and hitting the chains. It feels like a hike with entertainment built in. Plus I already mentioned that everybody except me is quite competitive in the family. I am the cheerleader.

The last day we went to explore the local Amish market, the craft and the hardware shops. We also got introduced to the game of “Wormburner”, which Dave described as Croquette in steroids. We are grateful for the memories we’re taking home with us. We are starting to feel the exhaustion of being for such a long time on the road though. We appreciate prayers for continued safe travels and stamina as we move on to our next stop in KY! Thank you for reading friends!