Once again, it’s been quite awhile since my last post 🙁  We’re still parked at my youngest daughters house in Bowling Green, KY and as I mentioned in my last post, we had our son William and his girlfriend Jasmin visit from Germany.  They were here for 3 weeks and we stayed very busy – so that’s my primary excuse for not updating the blog.  Let me try to bring you up to date on some of the stuff we’ve been up to since they got here…

On the 22nd of August, Stilla and I drove the Silverado from Bowling Green, KY up to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to pick up Will & Jasmin.  We drove ~220 miles one way to pick them up.  It was a long drive but William found a good deal on their tickets and it would have cost them a lot more to fly into someplace closer to us like Louisville or Nashville.

One of the first places we visited while they were here in Bowling Green, KY was the Lost River Cave.

We took the Lost River Cave boat tour.  This tour is touted as the “only underground boat tour in the state of Kentucky”.

We all had to duck our heads down for a short stretch to keep from hitting the cave ceiling.  Good thing there weren’t any stalactites hanging down, eh?

The boat tour was pretty cool along with the associated walking tour of the scenic valley in front of the cave entrance.  I highly recommend it if you’re visiting Bowling Green.  We also visited the National Corvette Museum on another day, but I didn’t take any pictures this time since I already blogged about it in an earlier post when  I visited there with an old Army buddy.

In other non-travel related news: My daughter Joleen and her fiancé Dylan had already scheduled to get the windows replaced on their new home, so we all hung around the house for a couple days to supervise the installers:

Will & Jasmin did a lot of running around town to get some shopping done while they were here.  We also checked out a large number of restaurants in the area many evenings.

On one of the weekdays while Joleen & Dylan had to work – I took Will & Jasmin to nearby Mammoth Cave National Park.  Stilla stayed home to watch the house and the dogs since caves aren’t her thing.

Our guided-tour took over an hour and it felt like we walked for miles.  We took the “Domes & Dripstones” tour for $15pp.

Our fascinating tour ended at a revolving door where we caught the bus back to the Visitors Center.

It was good to see sunlight again after our tour 🙂

Mammoth Cave is a “must-see” when visiting Kentucky… maybe I can get Stilla to take one of the shorter tours sometime.

Check back later for Part 2 of 2 on Will & Jasmin’s visit.  We also visited the Jim Beam Distillery and I have a lot more pictures but the laptop has been giving me trouble lately with loading and saving pictures into my iPhoto program.  We’re planning on heading back west soon so we can be at the next Alpine Coach Rally in Pahrump, NV by the 29th.  I’ll post again soon…

 

 

Still moochdocking at the daughter’s house in Bowling Green, KY.   It’s hard for me to keep the travel blog updated when we’re parked in one spot for so long.  Let me catch you up on our going-ons… first of all – renovations continue on the daughters’ house as you may recall from my last post.

The kitchen cabinets finally arrived that I installed with the help of a local handyman contractor that my daughter and her fiancé had previously arranged.

Several days later the marble countertops were installed by another local business.  The installers returned the next day to tile the backsplash area.

The kitchen is finally coming together.  We still have to do crown molding and baseboards, but otherwise it’s almost done.

The kids are still contemplating new appliances, either black or stainless steel.  They still need to find a microwave that will mount in the space above the existing stove.

In other areas of the house – Dylan found a good deal on a couple of new toilet bowls that he mounted himself.  Here he is (below) in the guest bathroom that we previously patched and painted.

The old bathroom sink and vanity still needs to be replaced in the following picture.

Here we tore out the old built-in vanity to make way for the new one:

And here’s the new sink and vanity after we got it installed.  Not bad for a couple days work.  We still have to tackle the master bathroom vanity and sink next.

Okay… that’s enough about updates on the house renovations.  It’s all definitely keeping me busy and Stilla enjoys cooking meals in a real kitchen instead of the Coach.  We’ve been eating pretty good lately 🙂

In other news – The Tri-Five Nationals are in town.  This is an annual event in Bowling Green and is touted as the largest gathering of 1955 thru 1957 Chevy’s in one place.  We (Stilla and I) attended a pre-show to the weekend activities in the downtown park on Wednesday evening:

On Saturday, the Tri-Five Nationals were in full swing at the Beech Bend Race park located next to the Beech Bend Amusement Park.  This time we all (Stilla, Joleen, Dylan, and I) went for the whole day.  I was in 7th Heaven… “57 Chevy heaven” that is 🙂  Most of my readers know that I used to have a ’57 Chevy Bel-Air and a ’57 Chevy pickup that I drove to local car shows.  I snuck in this picture (below) of them parked in the garage back in Colorado Springs before we sold everything to go full-time RVing.

Here’s some pics (below) we took at the Tri-Five Nationals (←link)… hope you enjoy as much as I did:

Drag race cars:

Lots of swap meet items for sale:

And thousands of 55-57 Chevy’s to check out.

Cool ’56 Chevy trailer (rear-view).

Cool ’56 Chevy trailer (front-view).

I’ve never seen so many ’57 Chevy’s in one place, especially ones that had the original color scheme (Colonial Cream/India Ivory) like mine had.  Here’s a two door Bel-Air convertible.

And here’s a two door Bel-Air hardtop just like my old one.

Acres of cars were on display:

I even spotted this 4 door (below) that looks just like the one my Dad still has hidden away in his garage.

Cool window tray display and drive-in movie speaker.  We used to have a similar window tray display that we put in place during car shows, I always thought it was a neat touch.

Another cool trailer.  Good old American ingenuity at work 🙂

And yet another two door Bel-Air hardtop in Colonial Cream/India Ivory colors.

The drag races went on all day.  Way cool 🙂

This (’57 Chevy) golf cart was cool.  Too bad I can’t fit anything else on the back of the Silverado 🙂

Stilla posed for a color-coordinated photo with a ’55 Chevy.

What a fun day!  It was a really cool event and I’m glad we happened to be here for this awesome annual gathering.

And in closing – Most recently, this past Monday – Stilla and I took a trip (about 70 miles) in the Silverado up to Fort Knox (←link).

I did Basic Training and my initial Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) Training here back in 1981.  I also returned in 1989 for about 6 months to attend the NCO Academy for the Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course (BNCOC).  So it was a full day of driving around trying to identify landmarks and buildings in order to revisit the past.

I found the barracks building where I stayed for BNCOC but all the old WWII-era buildings where I attended Basic Training have long since been torn down.  Here’s an example (below) located outside the Patton Museum.  A little trivia item;  the movie Stripes was filmed at Ft Knox just prior to my basic training and many of the old buildings I was very familiar with are depicted in the movie.  It’s always a cool trip down memory-lane when I get to watch that classic movie.

Unfortunately, the Patton Museum was closed on the day we visited (Monday) but at least I had the opportunity to visit this really neat museum when I was here in ’89.  It would have been nice to see how much it has changed… oh well, maybe we’ll make another trip up here.

And no visit to Fort Knox is complete without an obligatory pic of the Gold Depository (below).

It was a fun day, (for me at least), touring all the old sites in and around Fort Knox.

Stay tuned…  We’re expecting our son William to visit on the 22nd.  He’s flying into Cincinnati from Germany with his girlfriend Jasmine for a ~3 week vacation.  We’ll drive to the airport there to pick him up.  Hopefully, we have all of the house renovations completed before they get here so we can run around and do some sight-seeing.