Saturday, September 08, 2007

Tellico Plains, TN to Mammoth Cave, KY

Day 8 - 207 miles through Tennessee and Kentucky

Shonney’s was right next door so we walked over to grab some breakfast. Mike had the buffet, which he said wasn’t all that great, my pancakes were not that good either, but yet the place was packed. We left town on 30 heading west. West of Dayton the road got interesting as we climbed some mountains, some parts were very twisty and very steep.



Leaving Econo Lodge in Athens, TN



Heading West on 30









30 turned out to be a very nice road with some tight curves

In Spencer we turned North on 111 and got gas at the Shell. All gas stations should be like this, inside there was a nice selection of fresh fruit and other ready to eat foods. Real road food. It was only 11:30AM and we weren’t completely starving yet but since we were here we decided to have our lunch. I had a banana and a corndog.



Shell station in Spencer, TN



Mike picking some tasty corndogs



Lunch on the road



111 is a highway and we cruised right along finally turning west on 52 and then on 51 which turns to 163 in Kentucky. Both roads had some parts that were very nice with many turns.



52 to 51 which turns to 163 in Kentucky



One corner of many on 52

Then we turned right on 90 west and headed toward Glasgow. It was kind of cloudy all day and now it started drizzling, but very lightly. It was so hot and humid that the drizzle actually felt good.



Heading to Mammoth Cave

We stopped at a supermarket in Glosgow to get some supplies for a night of camping and headed on 70 toward Mammoth Cave National Park where we had a camp site reservation for tonight. We really wanted to get there early enough to see the last cave tour of the day which was at 4:45PM.

We got to the park, found our campsite but we needed to set up the tent and put some stuff away and lock some stuff up if we were going to leave the tent and bikes unattended, we simply ran out of time to do all that and still make it to the visitors center and buy the tickets.







Many deer in the park

No cave tour tonight, the drizzle had stopped which was great since camping in the rain is not a lot of fun. We found some wood to burn and started a fire, then ate the stuff we bought at the store. The deer were running all around the camp site, I’ve never seen anything like it.



Dinner consisted of tuna and crackers



For snacking we had potatoe chips, apples and muffins

It was a warm and humid night, so we ended up taking the rain fly off the tent but late at night or early the morning it started to drizzle again so we had to put it back on. It never got cold at night, temps stayed in the mid 70’s.

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