Laboring Under Our Own Delusions - Part 2

Did you read Part 1? 

Enjoying some hard earned Ale-8-Ones outside Diamond Caverns

When we hike the West Highland Way in about a month, we'll be doing three days of walking back to back to back, and our distances each day will be about 12 miles, 9 miles, and 15 miles, respectively.  Although Chris has logged longer days down in the Grand Canyon, my longest hike to date topped out just under 11.  To ensure I had experience with a longer stroll, on our second hiking day in Mammoth Cave National Park, we wanted to go long, and indeed, we did!  For this meander, we picked the Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike & Hike Trail; running 8-9 miles one way from the Visitor Center to nearby Park City, it's a crushed gravel path that covers the tracks of the railroad line that used to bring visitors to the Park (you saw one of the trains that used it in the last blog).  It's not super technical, but it does have some ups and downs; in this, it seems to pretty closely mirror our last day of trekking on the Way, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to see some cool stuff while helping us with our training.

Although we planned to make breakfast burritos and then start our hike, we faced an unplanned detour instead.  Upon waking up, we found that the battery on the travel trailer was completely dead; while we didn't need a lot of power on this trip, we still needed to run the water pump and keep the food in the fridge cool.  After a brainstorming session on what to do, we decided to head into the nearest decently sized town, have breakfast, and buy a new battery at the local Wal-Mart.  With all of that accomplished, we headed back to the campsite, installed the new battery, and ran the generator to get the battery fully charged, while we changed into today's set of hiking clothes and packed up our gear.

After finishing our Wal-Mart run - yup, the closest "town of size" is called Glasgow!

This trip really is preparing us for Scotland!

Eventually, it was time to hit the trail!  Since the Railroad route started just outside the door of the Visitor Center, that meant it also ran right past the entrance to the campground.  We hopped aboard a few steps away from the rig and began our hike.

See the dotted line with the person on the bike?  That's our trail!

Although the section near the VC is paved, the trail quickly becomes crushed gravel, and although there are a few sunny spots, overall, it's well shaded.  It parallels Mammoth Cave Parkway and Park City Road, but it veers away from the streets fairly substantially at times, so it's really a peaceful stroll, most of the way.

The start of the trail, near the campground

A scenic spot overlooking the Eaton Valley

Around the 4ish mile mark, we hit Sloan's Crossing Pond, and after strolling around it (there's a raised boardwalk to do just that), we figured it was time for lunch.  We broke out our chicken salad wraps and noshed in the shade.

The amazing weather was considered our second "false fall" this year in Kentucky,

but that didn't stop some of the trees from starting to turn colors

Sloan's Pond selfie!  It hadn't rained for several weeks for us at this point, and the pond was rather low.

We found some nice mushrooms, though!

The Railroad trail had all sorts of different scenic and historical markers, and we visited most of these on our way south (including the Eaton Valley overlook and the Pond).  Around mile 6, we detoured out to visit one of several old cemeteries on the route.

I think we're about *here* on this map

More nice mushrooms!

Although the trail is officially designated as 8 miles one way, by detouring to complete all of the available "side quests," we hit 8 about a mile before the true end (marked with a large Mammoth Cave NP sign).  We pondered walking one more mile, then turning around and doing 8 back, making our total mileage 17 for the day, but this seemed like overkill; instead, we took a break at a set of picnic tables near Diamond Caverns, a local attraction (this whole area is lousy with caves, caverns, and the like, and while the big guy - Mammoth - is a national park, most of the others are privately held.  You can descend into the Earth to your heart's content around here - if you're willing to pay for it).  After a visit to the Caverns' bathrooms and gift shop (where we purchased the cold ginger ales seen at the top of this post), it was back to the tables to rest a bit more and have a snack.

We made it here

Ale-8-One folks, feel free to contact me for use of this image in your marketing materials. ;)

The Diamond Caverns sign and building from our rest spot.

The bottom reads, "Discovered in 1859. Rediscovered daily."

With our break time over, we hit the trail again, this time heading north.  We passed by the spots we'd already seen, and we made another stop at the picnic tables at Sloan's Pond for a snack with 3 miles to go.

We paused to see the first eastern swallowtail on the thistle, and a second one flew in and joined the party!

Our lunch wraps were in a small soft-sided cooler with a bag of ice, inside Chris' backpack.  

By this point, the ice had turned to water, and I was happy to make good use of it.

Eventually, we made it back to the campground and Zelda, our travel trailer, and we were more than thrilled to take off our packs and hiking boots.  Our total distance for this excursion was 15.12 miles, which we did in just under 5 hours of walking time (6 hours of total time, with stops and whatnot).  Chris adventured to the showers at the camp store (verdict - clean, most stalls had curtains, no individual locks/doors on stalls, reasonably priced) while I used shower wipes in the camper, washing my hair and face in our shower and using as little water as possible.

We spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the shade and watching the local entertainment, eventually making our abandoned breakfast burritos for dinner and capping the night off with more S'mores.

Friday night's turkey must have been the scout, and they gave the flock the okay.

On Sunday, a group of 5 wandered through the back of our campsite,

crossing the road and eventually strolling down toward the end of our campground loop.

Be sure to see everyone in the campground taking pictures of them in the background of these shots.

Compression socks were very necessary after this hike

Putting a bit more water in the fresh tank, using my improvised funneling solution

(the duct tape is so no one cuts themselves on the sharp edges).

After a long day on our feet, we were ready to hit the hay!

Later!

Amy