We spent the day in Paducah today and visited the National Quilt Museum. When I hear museum I think old things, but this is a different sort of museum. Their mission is to honor today’s quilters and inspire future quilters. There are three main exhibit rooms and all of the pieces on display are modern quilts. There are several quilters featured with many of their quilts displayed, other individual quilts and a competition exhibit. All of the quilts were amazing! They ranged from more traditional to very abstract. You can get up close and check out the intricate piecing and stitching on each quilt. I think they succeed in their mission.
Solar EclipseYes, this is a quilt!Do you see the lady?Continue reading →
We left Natural Bridge State Park on a rainy morning. Better to have the rain when we drive than on a day off! And isn’t a rainy day a good excuse to find some tasty pastries and tea? We found just the place in Lexington, KY – European Delights Gourmet Bakery. And we got extra pastries for tomorrow morning!
Driving through Lexington brought us past beautiful, picture-perfect farms. We didn’t see many horses, but I bet those huge, pristine barns were full of them. We weren’t far from Louisville – maybe we should have stayed for the Derby. Perhaps another year.
Our mid-day stop today was Mammoth Cave National Park. This cave system truly is mammoth! There are over 400 miles of connected caves, and more areas continue to be discovered. We took a 2 hour tour and got to see some of the most prominent features. Unlike our kayak tour, there were over 100 folks on this tour. They offer about 10 different tours with many departure times throughout the day – and they were sold out for the day (luckily, we had reserved tickets ahead of time). The cave system is on multiple levels. As the nearby river continued to erode the earth, the water in the caves would drain through a lower level, leaving the upper chambers dry. Our tour took us to a depth of over 300 feet. Tours have been given in the cave for over 100 years, and those early tours were by oil lanterns and lasted 8-16 hours. They didn’t have the smooth walkways that exist today, so there was a lot of scrambling over the rocks. The guide at the back carried a large pack and halfway through the tour would lay out a large picnic for the group. It sounds fun to me!
We settled into our campsite in Paducah for the next 2 nights. This is an urban campsite – a small family run business. We can hear the highway and some noises of the city, but it’s a good spot to let us explore Paducah. Tomorrow’s highlight will be the National Quilt Museum. Stay tuned!
Today is our first day of local adventuring. We have 2 no-travel days scheduled along our route to Colorado. There’s so much to see along our way, but we really do want to get to Boulder!
In the morning we ventured down the road to go kayaking in an old limestone mine. The cool thing about this trip is that the kayaks are clear plastic and have lights on the bottom. There are also lights in places under the water. It’s very cool – and very cool – 50o in the mine with 38o water. We had a small group of about 6 kayaks and 2 guides. The limestone was mined for almost 100 years, until they hit an aquifer and the mine flooded. There was no way to pump the water out, so the mine was abandoned. Now there is a thriving business of Kayak and stand-up paddle board tours – we were told that tours will almost always sell out.
We had another leisurely morning before setting off from North Bend State Park to Natural Bridge State Park in Kentucky. We didn’t have any set stops along the way, but found a nice spot for lunch at the Grayson Walking Trail in Grayson, KY.
As we got closer to our destination, we stumbled upon Broke Leg Falls in Wellington, KY. It’s a little hidden spot, and I’m sure most people drive by without knowing it’s there. It’s a nice little gorge with a waterfall that you can walk under, and there is a trail going down along the gorge. Broke Leg Falls was in the path of a tornado that went through the area in 2012. The walkway structures have been rebuilt, but the damage to trees is still very evident.
We have fairly short drives most days on this trip, so no need to leave super early. Today we were on the road at 8:35am.
Yesterday and today we could see that spring is well under way as we drive through the countryside. The trees have the soft glow of greens and reds as the buds are beginning to emerge. And I have never seen so many redbud trees! As we drove along the Ohio River, the bright pink was popping out everywhere. I think it may be the tail end of the redbuds since there’s almost as much pink on the ground as on the trees. Our redbud at home was just beginning to pop when we left for our trip.
6:40am Driving off with the camper – we have 7 days of driving, 8 nights in campgrounds and 2,385 miles ahead of us!
A foggy morning start!
Our first stop was for breakfast in Binghamton, NY. Since we bring our kitchen along with us, we just need to find a pleasant spot to take a break. I use Atlas Obscura whenever possible to find unique places for our breaks. We have visited the largest ball of twine, the largest ketchup bottle, and the Grand Kugel on previous trips. Today it was the carousel that inspired Rod Serling to write the Twilight Zone episode “Walking Distance”. There is also a plaque in the gazebo that is dedicated to him. It turns out that this was very fitting, as some towns we will later drive through are definitely in the Twilight Zone.
We settled into our camping spot, which had the perfect view for the next day’s eclipse viewing. We met some fellow campers and invited them to join us for the big event.
View from our camping spot.All set up.
After finishing off our BLT’s, we brought out the cribbage board – a now routine evening activity when we travel. Tonight’s game was as close as you can get – we finished a hand with each of us one point away from a win, and Rachel got that point.
Isn’t it fun the way mother nature and good old New England weather can dash all of your plans? Well, that happened to us, but with a just fine outcome. My plan was to head to my dad’s in NH (where the Scamp has spent the winter) on Friday and spend the nice April weekend cleaning it out, flushing the antifreeze out of the lines and getting her all set for lots of upcoming camping. Nice April weekend, you say? Not the case. A big storm was heading straight to dad’s – 19” of snow forecast for Wednesday-Friday. OK, we’ll head up Wed. morning and pull the camper out to a spot that will be easy to clear and to make an easy get-away on Sunday.
We warmed up the Scamp with our little electric heater and went to bed with just a dusting of snow on the ground Wednesday night. We woke up to a very cold camper and the heater wouldn’t turn on – no power. At least 8” of heavy, wet snow had fallen overnight and trees and powerlines were down all over. I grew up with power outages from storms – we’ll be fine in a few hours. A few hours later, the house is now getting cold, and we’re all a lot older and less tolerant of these things. We were rescued by a friend who brought us a generator, so we had heat in the house. No lights or water (other than bottled water we brought for camping), but heat and a gas stove to cook on. Three wool blankets, a quilt, and down comforter kept us warm in the camper overnight.
We are eagerly planning for our trip to CO in April. There’s a pile of supplies slowly accumulating as Amazon deliveries come in, and lists are being made for packing, meals, activities along the way, and camper readiness projects.
I will admit to being a bit of a pyromaniac, so I’m really looking forward to some good campfires on our trip. I have a box packed with newspaper and cardboard ready to go. Generally, you are not allowed to bring firewood along for the ride. Due to invasive pests, you are only allowed to burn local wood, and we usually scour the campground for downed branches for our fires. Sometimes it’s hard to find good, dry wood, and those fires are hard to start and keep going.
My experiment for this trip is to see if homemade fire starters will help promote awesome campfires. John has been busy building kitchen cabinets, so we have a supply of sawdust in the “cabinet shop” (aka the downstairs bathroom awaiting renovation). Armed with some soy candle wax and our next empty egg carton, I got to work – more fun than work.
The wax came in flake form, and I used an empty jam jar to melt it in a pan of hot water. There’s a lot of air in those flakes, so a full jar melts down to about half full.
I cut the top off my cardboard egg carton and filled each cavity with sawdust and wood shavings. Then I poured the melted wax in to fill the carton. This took several meltings of wax, and I used the full one-pound bag for a dozen fire starters. In between pourings, I mashed the shavings down with a wooden skewer and added more to fill the cavities. Once hardened, the carton was easy to slice into 12 pucks.
Hopefully, these will burn long enough and hot enough to get my campfire blazing. I’ll post photos from our trip!
We have enjoyed a few nights in our scamp this winter when we visit my dad in NH. Even though we are welcome to stay in his house, it’s fun to sleep in the camper. One morning it was 11o outside, but we can keep the camper toasty warm with a little cube heater and a pile of blankets. A big upgrade this winter was an electric blanket. We turn it on after dinner and it warms the foam mattress topper so we can slip into a toasty bed.
We have 2 trips planned for April. The first one will be a short jaunt up to northern VT to view the total eclipse. This will be our “work out the kinks” trip before heading west to CO for 3 weeks. We will keep our fingers crossed that our winterizing was successful – flushing out the antifreeze from all of the lines and hoping for no leaks. We’ll do a thorough cleaning and airing out to freshen it up, and restock the kitchen.
When we purchased the camper, the only color choice we had was for the cushions – we chose blue. Everything else is white or beige with brown cabinet doors. This summer is my chance to brighten it up a bit and make it more cozy and homey.
First off – new curtains! I picked out some nice fabric and made them with a light fabric lining. The double layer should help with light filtering for sleep, and the light color (I hope) will help keeping cool in the summer sun (we opted out of adding an A/C unit, so everything we can do helps). I could have just sewn a tube along the top of each curtain, but I decided to add tabs instead to reduce bulk and make them slide easier. After sewing on 75 tabs, the curtains are ready to hang!
Another upgrade that was necessary for future trips is to change out our mattress. The bed consists of the dinette table dropped down and bench cushions spread out. Even with a foam topper, the factory cushions are too hard and sleeping more than 2 nights results in a very achy body. John reminded me that we would be on the road for 3 weeks, so we had to do something. We ordered a king sized foam mattress, bought an electric knife on marketplace, and went to work. It was much easier than I had expected – and fun. We removed the old cushion, traced around them on the new foam, and cut away. We leave the bed set up full time in our camper, and still have a small dinette that seats 2. We replaced those cushions, too, to make that a more comfortable spot to sit. The electric knife worked so well! The camper is still hours away in NH, so our eclipse trip will be the first test.
Another big upgrade in the works is new cabinet doors. John will make a prototype to try out, and since we only have a few days between trips, the rest will be a late spring/summer project. Until then, we wish for no snow on the ground to hook up the camper and clear skies for eclipse day. We’ll post photos!
