Northern Tennessee (May 2023)

We had reserved a tour of Mammoth Cave, up in Kentucky, for 2:45 pm, so we set out to drive up there from Nashville that morning. The drive went smoothly, and we arrived at the park well before lunch. We did some hiking around the surface of the park near the visitor's center, that was a bit more strenuous than the distance indicated, as it was quite hilly in the area. After that, we went to lunch at a place called Porky Pig's Diner, which was good, then headed back for our tour. A sudden cloudburst came through, and turned out to be a bit more than a cloud burst. We ended up just taking an hour-long nap in the car while that went on. The tour group was quite sizeable, and the tour lasted roughly 2 hours, which only encompassed a tiny part of the massive cave system, but the cave itself was very impressive and lived up to the name. We headed back to Nashville, and as it was already late, went to dinner at a community-style restaurant called Monell's (recommended to us by the distillery owner from Sunday) which was quite good.