We left home Saturday morning bright and early after dropping Luna off at doggie daycare! It was a 6.5 hour drive to Cave City, Kentucky where had one night booked at a Comfort Inn so that we could see Mammoth Cave National Park. The drive was thankfully uneventful and Scott drove the whole way. We grabbed lunch at Chick-Fil-A between Dayton and Cincinnati, so I was one happy lady!
We opted to get off the freeway and go straight to the national park so that we could get out, stretch our legs, and do a hike. We arrived around 3:30pm, went to the visitor's center to pick up the boys' Junior Ranger booklets, and got a map. We picked a 2 mile round trip hike on a trail that went by a river. The boys found a snail hanging out on a moss covered rock. We also found a small waterfall that was pretty!
We were hungry and ready to grab dinner at this point. We got in touch with our neighbors, Shelley, Jay, and Nevaeh and they met up with us at a BBQ place right by our hotel called Busy Bee's BBQ. It was delicious and the portion sizes were huge! The only complaint was that they didn't serve beer or alcohol. I would have loved a beer to wash down the food and a long day of driving. Oh well!
The kids were dying to swim, so we checked in and quickly switched into our bathing suits. It was a little crowded in the small indoor pool so I kept my mask on the whole time. After an hour or so it was time for the kids to shower and get ready for bed. They watched a bit of a movie on their iPad before it was lights out.
The next morning we ate breakfast in the hotel room (some items we brought from home and some came from the hotel). The hotel had an employee scooping the items out and putting them in takeout boxes for breakfast. We had an English muffin with some scrambled eggs and a sausage patty. Made ourselves a little breakfast sandwich minus cheese.
It was time to go back to Mammoth Cave for our cave tour. We went early so the boys could turn in their booklets and earn their badges and we had some time to shop in the gift shop and walk around a bit. The boys each got a cute tin cup and a pin.
Our cave tour was at 10:15am and it was a self-guided extended tour because of COVID. They were limiting the number of people in the cave at a time and it was honestly pretty awesome. There were parts where it felt like we were the only ones in there, which was cool and creepy at the same time! We were amazed at how "mammoth" this cave really is!
We wrapped things up just before noon and hit the road to head to Pigeon Forge Tennessee. It was a little over a 4 hour drive and we stopped to pick up Subway for a late lunch somewhere in Kentucky. We arrived into Pigeon Forge around 5pm and drove to Big Daddy's Pizzeria initially, but they had a 45 minute wait. So, we went to The Island and placed an online order at Mellow Mushroom's pizza place. The timing was perfect. We had just enough time to get to the The Island, find parking, find the pizza place and get our food. We grabbed an outdoor table and had pizza, salad, and beer while watching kids do a rope course.
We shopped, bought some mini cookies at Byrd's, let the kids pick out a toy at the toy store, watched the fountain show, and tried to get a moonshine sample, but it was too busy. Finally, it was time to check-in to our hotel and the kids wanted to swim. We were glad they had a heated outdoor pool so we didn't feel so cooped up at the indoor pool. They swam, I sat in the hot tub, Scott did his fantasy baseball draft, and we watched an amazing sunset.
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