driving to tennessee // mammoth cave national park
ok so ima just keep on truckin with this post-trip blog posts. hope y’all don’t mind. i know i love hearing about behind the scenes things from my fave bloggers, and i’m sure i’m not that weird. so you probably don’t actually mind. and if you do, just skip them and just check back monday morning for everyone’s favorite the weekly houston events calendar! ok. blah blah. so i did the zen thing in kentucky and made the friend in louisville. that was the first 6 days. then i rented a car (want to know how old i am – let me just say i’m not yet 25 – which le SUCKS in the world of rental car agencies. i’m talkin’ bout an additional $25 a day. what WHAT. dumb.) so i did that and started driving south tuesday morning. HELLO tennessee. (well almost, you’ll actually have to wait for the next post for the tennessee-ness) i knew i was going to the grand ole opry in nashville wednesday night, so i made a spotify playlist of all the artists i’d be hearing and played it during my drive. i’m so good! and i now know i LOVE the secret sisters. (i probably listened to their song “tennessee me” at least 4 times a day)
somewhere before i reached tennessee but after i switched over from eastern to central time zones (that was such a hard brain thing for me to grasp) i stopped at mammoth cave national park. lemme just say mammoth cave is the longest cave system in the world with 400+ miles of surveyed passageways. it was very cool and also lit-er-ally cool. i took a tour and luckily i always have a cardigan in my bag but dang me, i didn’t really think about how cold it’d be and yikes, shorts were a bad idea. this tour was the first “thing” i did by myself on the trip. every few minutes i wished i had a friend to turn to and make a face about all the freakin annoying familes and groups and couples who were also on the tour. i’m not alway mean // judgmental but me saying these people were “annoying” is just a FACT. i tried to make friends, but to no avail. honestly, this being the first thing i did and it not being the best had me a wee bit nervous about the next 8 days. (little did i know that this trip in it’s entirety would end up being one of my best travel stories ever. eeepppp!) so point is, i did this and it was low key good // fine.
(there were some points where we had to walk bent over, and others where we shimmy through some really tight walkways. good thing i’m not claustrophobic. at one point our tour guide turned off the lights and it was literally pitch dark. caves + the bottom of the ocean are the only places were complete darkness can be attained. so that was cool.)