When I worked at Cave of the Winds in Colorado Springs (well, Manitou Springs to be exact) it seemed like there were always people who would compare us to Mammoth cave in Kentucky. It was always something about how small our cave was compared to Mammoth. So naturally I was excited to finally see this cave with my very own eyes. And it was still bloody hot out so the 54 degree cave sounded pretty awesome. I booked us a tour at 10:00am for the Domes and Dripstones tour which started with a bus ride to a different entrance to the cave.
Travels
Heat, chicken and fireflies
Whoooooa nelly its hot and humid here in West Virginia and the forecast for the Mammoth Cave area in Kentucky is more of the same. The trailer has a pretty good AC unit in it so it keeps us comfortable. Today we were driving from Jim’s campground to Singing Hillls campground just outside of Mammoth cave national park so the Beast’s AC would keep us cool. The drive was pretty uneventful. We stopped along the way and treated ourselves to a Subway sandwich and the coolness of the restaurant (the AC in Ava only works when we have shore power…so it was hot at lunch time).
Almost heaven
West Virginia, Blue Ridge mountains, Shenandoah river. Any John Denver fans? I’ve never seen John Denver fans like the ones I saw at a country music festival in Wiesbaden Germany…that was trippy. But that’s a different story.
We were leaving southwestern Pennsylvania and on our way to West Virginia so Country Roads was definitely on my brain. Right after leaving Ohiopyle and getting on the highway we saw several signs warning that dangerous mountains lie ahead. The signs suggested that trucks pull over at the top of the mountain to do a safety check and study the map which showed runaway truck ramps. I asked the Beast if she was ready to show Pennsylvania how Colorado drivers handle a mountain with 14,000 lbs dragging along behind…she purred along as if to say, “bring it on!” It was a steep hill for sure but between that Allison transmission in low gear and the exhaust brakes we did just fine!
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Ohiopyle
What is there to do in Ohiopyle State Park? That’s what we were wondering, so we did what any tourists would do and we asked the park rangers at the campground office. The ranger was super helpful and provided a map and circled several “must see” locations for us. The first on our list were the water slides. This was the one thing my friend had mentioned to me…that there were some natural water slides. We arrived at an empty parking lot then followed the wooden stairs down to the river. I’m not sure what the rest of the family had go through their minds but my brain processed something about like this “nu uh, no way….that is a whitewater death trap…nobody in their right mind would get in that raging torrent….no thank you!” None of the kids seemed too excited to get in the water so maybe I wasn’t alone. They threw some sticks in intending to watch them float down stream only to have them completely devoured by the frothing white water never to be seen coming out the bottom. Just about the time we all agreed that we would not be sliding down this river a dude shows up in swim trunks!
Data Diet
The good old USA is mostly a land of no limits. We pretty much have all the electric, gas, water, phone, texting and internet we can use. Sure, we get a bill at the end of the month for our water, electric and gas but, if you are like me, unless it is drastically different than last month’s bill we don’t really pay attention to how many gallons of water, kilowatt hours of electricity or cubic feet of natural gas we’ve used. Even if we do, we really have no idea what or who is using it and when. Can you imagine what would happen if there was an app that alerted you with the dollar amount you just used when you flushed the toilet, took that really long shower, dried that load of wet towels, watered your lawn, stared in the open door of your fridge or adjusted your AC/furnace down/up a couple degrees? Well, its no app, but living in a self contained rolling house is definitely a step in that direction. With a limited amount of waste water and garbage holding capacity and finite supply of water, electricity, propane and internet you become keenly aware of your usage. And, the cool part? You become keenly aware of how little you actually need to be comfortable!! It has definitely piqued my interest in off-grid living. But in this post I will just focus on the data diet we adopted while on the road.
Working from the road
Awhile back in our life on the move series I promised that I’d give some more details on some of the logistics of doing work from the road, in particular how we’ve stayed digitally connected. This was something that I worried about quite a bit before we left because I rely heavily on an internet connection for work and I had absolutely no concept of how much data I used on a regular basis or the reliability of 4g data. The good news is that the solution for me turned out to be pretty simple and the price, while a little high, was definitely doable.
What’s that screeching sound?
We’ve been doing some long travel days as we near the end of our time out on the road. We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there…hey, that would make a good song lyric 😉 Since we like to stay in an area for 3 or 4 days we’re doing longer drive days and skipping some stuff in between. Today’s drive was from Niagara to southwestern Pennsylvania to a state park called Ohiopyle. Have you ever heard of it? I sure hadn’t, but a friend of mine from PA gave it high marks. We weren’t sure if it was pronounced o-HI-o-pile or o-hee-O-ple but we were heading there anyway.
Beach glass, fort, church, and sunset
Our campground was just a few miles from Fort Niagara State Park so we decided to take a picnic there and check it out. We were expecting to pay for entry but when we arrived there was nobody at the booth so we just went on in. There were only a few other cars in the parking lot. We headed straight to the beach of Lake Ontario which had smooth stones just like the one back at our campground. But as we looked closer we started finding beach glass…green bits, clear bits and brown bits. Every so often you would find a nice dark blue or ruby red piece. All 5 of us got so mesmerized by looking for the stuff that anytime one of us would say, “ok, let’s take a break and go eat” everyone would agree and then the next thing you know, we’re all heads down again picking up bits of glass. I cannot tell you why it was so satisfying to search, find and collect that glass but it was. It actually happens to us at most beaches but it’s usually shells that capture our focus. There is a sameness at the same time that there is uniqueness…maybe that is what makes it so intriguing. All the glass is composed primarily of silica and roughly the same size…but they are different colors and they are different shapes. If each one could tell it’s story. The story about the bottle it once was, the tragedy that caused it to break and the journey it has taken to arrive at this beach where it was rescued by someone who saw the beauty in its brokenness. Maybe we are a bit like the beach glass and perhaps this is why we were so content to spend hours collecting the stuff.
Falling for Niagara
Steph booked us a spot at Four Mile Creek campground just north of Niagara Falls. It was a LONG day of driving…might have actually been a record day. We left at 8:45am, only made 2 stops and pulled into the campground about 6:00pm. We had more insane tolls and some of the worst paved roads I have ever seen. The Robert Moses Memorial Highway from Niagara to the campground had grass growing up through the concrete highway…if I were Robert I’d be pretty miffed about how I was memorialized with that crappy excuse of a highway!! But the campground was GREAT!! Big grassy spots with shade trees and just a short stroll over to the shore of Lake Ontario with a view of Toronto across the water.
Over the Falls and Through the Rocks to… Death Maybe?
I am fascinated with waterfalls and that sort of thing so I was happy when we went to Niagara falls. We couldn’t go over to Canada because of passports, or lack thereof. We still saw the falls, we just didn’t get that famous view of horseshoe falls. We did however go on a cave of the winds tour which at one point gets you to a “hurricane deck” where you’re partly under bridal veil falls. We did a lot so I’m not gonna be able to tell you every last thing we did like, picking up tons of beach glass and how I even got some big blue pieces, or how Dacen and I played some soccer with these older-ish kids (some were my age), and maybe how we basically just relaxed a lot and played on some playgrounds and that was about all we did. Yeah I just can’t go into detail like how the slides were really fast and how the soccer nets were so high and at Niagara falls we learned about people going in barrels over the falls and through the rocks. I can however, tell you about this sign before the falls that said No Water Access Violators Will Be Prosecuted. In my mind it said No Water Access. Violators Will Drown or if not They Will Die Going Over the Falls or if not They Will Die Hitting the Water or if not They Will Drown or if not they Will be Hauled out of the Water and be Prosecuted. Yeah.
That’s all folks!
Caden