Em and the Gang: Family Road Trip

Day Seven
Buckle up... it's a long one!

Driving through Indiana... we found a wind farm!
It was SO cool - there were these huge windmills as far as the eye could see... and we decided to investigate them further... We wanted to see if they made noise! We were also a little curious if we would be allowed to get close to one.

We got off the highway... and drove through a little town towards a cornfield...

We found one that looked like we could get to it from the farm road...

They were a lot bigger than we thought! The base of each one is about 12 feet in diameter, and each of the 3 blades is about 100 feet long. They are pretty quiet... we could KINDA hear some 'whoosh' sound if we were VERY quiet... but even standing under one it was hard to hear.

Once we got home, we found out that each of the windmills can power up to 500 homes! That's so cool! Think of the power generated by the 300 or so that we saw... Clean energy! And we could still farm underneath - although, I think we grow WAY too much corn!

Our next stop was Louisville, KY. As we were driving through, we decided to stop in the city for something to eat - and we saw a really cool park on the river... so we decided to get some grub and head down to the park.

As you see, when Mike saw a White Castle, we stopped... he insisted they were yummy... but I'm not convinced. I didn't like mine... the kids weren't thrilled with theirs either... the ducks thought they were OK.

It was bright... we were hoping for more river traffic, but all we saw was one big barge.

I guess the river floods... look at this Joe's Crab Shack!

An interesting sign - very smart to warn people. It had been rainy the last few days... good to warn people that the water isn't sanitary. We didn't let the kids play in it at all...

But, there was a family using one of the run-off fountain-like things for a swimming pool... It grossed me out to think of the things in that water.

This is the bridge we drove over when we were on our way into town, and the barge that went by while we were there eating our lunch. It was interesting because there were 6 barges all chained together, with one tug-boat pushing them along.

This family was working hard to pedal up the little hill in the park... I felt bad for them when they had to stop because the kid dropped a coke can, and had to pick it up. I was just sorry that they had to try to get going again... not that they had to stop and pick up the can.

This is a cool piece of sculpture in part of the park.

After we got back on the road, we drove right by Louisville Slugger field.

There were several cool barns with quilt blocks painted on them all during our trip - I only managed to get a good picture of this one. SO cool!

The Kentucky Artisan Center is really great if you're ever in the area. There were a lot of examples of what local artisans are able to do in this area. I fell in love with some locally harvested, spun, and dyed yarn... but it was prohibitively expensive for the hank... I couldn't justify spending $50+ for one hank of yarn no matter how beautiful it was... I guess I should have taken a picture!

I enjoyed reading the informative signage, but everyone else was in a hurry to get to our campground, so we hit the road again!

We got to Cumberland Falls State Resort Park pretty early in the day, it was great! We checked out where our campsite was, then went straight to the falls. It was very commercialized... not anything like I expected! There were paved trails all along the falls area along with signs stating to stay out of the water - no wading allowed! I guess they didn't want anyone accidentally going over the falls! In the picture below, if you click on it, you might be able to tell that is a huge slab of rock that has been eroded into weird pock-marks and indentations.

We walked straight out to the falls area... and make sure to stay behind the rope!

There is a LOT of water flowing over this drop! It's so hard to do it justice with photos... especially since there really isn't a good way to get any sort of perspective shot...

Apparently on a night with a full moon, the huge amount of mist creates enough water droplets to make a 'moonbow'... we weren't there during a full moon, so we didn't come down after dark.

There were several trails around the riverside with more 'overlooks', so we did some exploring.

There was a cool cave...

The entrance was nice and large, but I was afraid of snakes being in there - so we didn't go in!

We went further down the trail and found out that apparently there was another trail that didn't last quite as long as they expected it to...

We decided to keep going anyway... and found a cool beach - with signs all over the place warning us that we would be breaking the law if we went in the water!

Back to the camp site to set up camp and have dinner!

Our campsite was brand-new... and they had just spread the gravel... unfortunately, it wasn't WASHED gravel, and there was gravel dust all over the van and our shoes when we left!!!