We had Memphis style baby back pork ribs to share between us with the usual trimmin's, with music by Elvis playing in the background.
The next day we drove through Tennessee past rich rolling farm lands with cattle and much more agricultural than we've seen in most of the states before. We had definitely left the south of the USA. You could tell it by the forests the green grass and the different style of architecture. We crossed over the border into Kentucky and headed to the area of Kentucky called Land between the Lakes. A huge man-made damming of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers repeated to be the largest man-made lake in the world.
Our destination was Lake Barkley State Park which we arrived in late in the afternoon. We found our campsite in a very wooded area surrounded by pine trees that made it extremely difficult to back into. Not the best site, but quiet.
There was lots of wildlife around and we saw a Whitetail deer, eating not far away from our fifth wheel. We stayed a few days and then moved on to Mammoth Cave National Park and stayed in probably the best campground we have stayed in the USA at Nolin Lake State Park. (and one of the cheapest)
Over the next two days we visited Mammoth Cave the largest cave system in the world with over 400 miles of passageways that have been found.
We went on two tours that were offered. The first was the Historic tour which was a two mile walk through quite dry areas of the cave. The second tour had more spectacular features including the famous Niagara Falls as well as the most amazing entrance down a narrow chimney from the side of a hill.
Perhaps not the most spectacular caves we have been to, but certainly the most extensive. To get to the caves we had to cross by a ferry over the Green River, a tributary of the Ohio River.
Then there was one last state park in Kentucky for a few days near the northern border at Paducah. We leave here on Thursday and head to St Louis, Missouri, some 230 miles away, a long drive for us.
The weather has cooled a bit from the deep south. Mid eighties now rather than mid nineties, but the days are getting hotter, but we are also moving northwards so they are balancing each other out.
