KENTUCKY, National Corvette Museum and Mammoth Cave Park

Keeping this to ourselves, we moved on up the highway May 11 to Diamond Caverns RV Park at Park City, Kentucky. This is on the edge of Mammoth Cave National Park and not too far from Bowling Green. Thus we had plenty to do and even left some to do the next time we pass through the area. Our first outing was to The National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green where Corvettes are displayed. There are models of each of these American sports cars since the first model in the 1953 . Under the design leadership role of legendary Harley J Earl, the first fiberglass Corvette was shown at the Motorama in New York City in January of 1953 and the first 300 were assembled at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan with the fiberglass body being made by The Molded Fiberglass Company of Astabula, Ohio. In 1954 they moved production to a larger plant in St. Louis, Missouri. Then in 1981 it was moved to the plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky where they are still produced today. We did not take a tour through the plant. We will save that for next trip.

In addition to all of the Corvettes in the museum and the history, there is a separate room of a Dale Earnhardt, Jr. memorabilia collection display . I took several photos of this room for the benefit of our grandson. There was everything from the model cars, jackets, photos and games to unopened boxes of cereal promoting Dale and his racing. This was all donated by Terry Neal Thomas from Glasgow, Kentucky . There were at least five glass display cases.

We were in a nice park centrally located at Park City, Kentucky which had a nice playground , a minature golf course , swimming pool in addition to the game room, fitness room and sauna. We were greeted the first day by a neighbor with his beautiful dog . Thus Gary's standard comment, "Everyone has One". We spent one evening in the lounge to watch a movie "Seven Pounds" If you get the opportunity to see this movie, it was a very moving story. We recommend it!

Another day we took a drive through Mammoth Cave National Park. However, we did not go into the caves this trip either. It is a nice park though not nearly as trim and neat as many State Parks that we have been through. Much of this was probably due to an ice storm this past winter. There were still many downed and broken trees to be cleaned out. It will take quite some time for all of this to be finished. We first saw the train cars from the Louisville-Nashville Railroad built in 1859 connecting those two cities. That was the first form of transportation into this rugged area known as the wild west.

We passed an old cemetery that was all fenced in and others that were still in use today. Then we came to Green River which had to be crossed using Houchin's Ferry . We had to wait for it come across the river for us and our car. The roads in this part of the park were black top, but there were many other roads that were gravel and quite rough . It was on one of those that we again had to cross the Green River by ferry. We also saw wild turkeys, one with his pretty feathers fanned out. But they were too fast to leave the road side for me to get pictures. That is often the story of my life! But it was an enjoyable driving day.

Check in again for the next segment of Kentucky.