Pining for the Fjords

Be sure to read Part 2 ! We made it to the Mammoth Cave NP sign! (Just not solely by foot) Our last full day in Mammoth Cave National Park was Labor Day itself, and as mentioned in earlier blog posts, we'd planned to make this our third hiking day in a row, to replicate part of our upcoming trip to walk the West Highland Way in Scotland.  Unfortunately, our minds were writing checks our lower halves couldn't cash; I was having significant pain in a spot on the top of my left foot when I donned my hiking shoes (I think I caught my left big toe on a root and tripped while walking around camp, and it caused a hot spot on the top of the foot), and Chris' ankle was giving him troubles (he'd slightly turned it stepping wrong off the paved part of our campsite a few nights earlier).  After a short walk to the Visitor Center in our planned day's trail apparel proved to be too painful, we instead bagged the idea of another hike in the park and decided to spend the day crui...

Did you read Part 1 ?  Enjoying some hard earned Ale-8-One s 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...