Day 3 - Hotter than a coonskin jockstrap

Winchester to Bowling Green via Louisville and Mammoth Caves

Phew! 90-odd degrees and humid... and stays that way well into the evening. Just as well we spent a few hours in the subterranean coolness of Mamouth Caves. Not that we thought we were likely to make it. We turned up with exactly zero minutes (well not exactly, we were in fact late) to spare, despite having an extra hour due to crossing a time zone. I don't know who thought that having several time zones within a state was a good idea, but we appreciated it today. We are choosing to view it as an exceptional example of planning and maximizing use of time. And Mammoth Caves? It's a big cave.

To rewind...

The day started with a trip to the very pleasant looking Lousiville to visit the Lousiville Slugger Museum.

En route, we were constantly encouraged to divert to various distilleries on the Bourbon Trail. Tempting but oh, wait minute, it's Sunday and thinking about alcohol is beyond the pale. Who planned this trip? If it wasn't for the extreme temporal ninja skills already mentioned, I might have been critical of this. As it turns out, the prohibition does not extend to Liquor Barn. Oh my, that was quite some discovery. I could happily take up residence in their bourbon section (or the wine section, rum section...) so we were well provisioned when we got to Bowling Green.

From Lousiville there was a quick trip across the Ohio river into Indiana (another state, tick) to Clarkesville Seafood. A fantastic throwback to simpler, cholesterol-friendly times. Ethan described it as "greasy, salty perfection" and who am I to argue? He certainly knows his onions when it comes to food research.

Sadly, my weak attempts at Monkees based humour went unappreciated. I had suggested that we should head to Clarkesville later in the day by train, but this was met with a look which expressed the concern of having to potentially have an elderly relative locked away for their own safety.

Ah well, onwards to Mammoth caves, or so I thought. Apparently, there were plans to undertake a drive-by photograph of Fort Knox.

It was this "diversion" that put us into a lively debate around priorities and led to the aforementioned scheduling masterclass, although a certain amount of flexibility with regards to local conventions around vehicular alacrity.

Anyway, we finally made it to Bowling Green, with quite the party atmosphere developing in the hotel amongst the eclipse celebrators. I guess we could stay here and watch the eclipse, but who is willing to put up with a mere 40 seconds of totality when you can get 2 minutes more by queuing in traffic to get into Hopkinsville? Ethan has learned that the twin princes of conspiracy theories Alex Jones and Jesse Ventura will be in Hopkinsville tomorrow (presumably awaiting the return of the goblins), so the die is cast...

I am now inordinately excited about the eclipse, and irritating Ethan severely with my geeky desire to get up at stupid o'clock and head over to Hopkinsville.