We finished off our last week of March with our spring break trip. Since Briggs is in 4th grade, we let him pick his National Park of choice for this year. He chose Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Since Mammoth Cave was on our way to the Smoky Mountains, it worked out great to fit that in on the front end of our trip.
We left right after school on Friday and drove the 6ish hours down to Glasgow, KY with a quick stop at Culver's for dinner. Our audio books for this trip were 'The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents', ' Skulduggery Pleasant: Scepter of the Ancients', and 'When Stars are Scattered.' All of them were good, although 'The Amazing Maurice' was the collective favorite.
We stayed in a Holiday Inn Express in Glasgow. Our room had a queen bed and a king bed. We decided that Briggs could just sleep with us in the king since they didn't have any cots and we didn't want to deal with the air mattress. That was a mistake. Now we know why the girls always complain when they have to share a bed with Briggs. He moves and flops around and shakes the whole bed when he rolls over and wakes up a lot and is generally just a loud and restless sleeper. Not the best combination for a bed mate.
After our not-so-great night of sleep, we had our hotel breakfast (always a highlight) and then drove to Mammoth Cave. There are a variety of guided tours at Mammoth Cave, all of which were sold out when I tried to reserve one a few weeks prior to our visit. I had offered to the kids that I could go try to line up early for one of the first-come, first-serve spots on a guided tour, but they all said they'd just prefer to do the self-guided tour...so that's what we did.
The self-guided tour (Extended Discovery Tour) allowed you to visit several different areas within the cave. You entered through the Historic Entrance to the Rotunda and then traveled along Audobon Avenue and Broadway. There were rangers available to answer questions and placards with information as you walked around. It was large and impressive in size, and we learned some interesting information from the placards as well as from the museum in the visitor's center.
Briggs was disappointed in his choice. Mammoth Cave was not what he expected. We did not get to see an stalagmites or stalactites. We saw one small bat, but no other cave wildlife. The cave itself was large and very developed with walkways, barriers, lighting, and lots of people. It wasn't the type of cave experience Briggs was hoping for, and he verbalized feeling disappointed and like he "wasted" his national park choice. Thankfully we were able to make this up to him towards the end of our trip. (Stay tuned for that.)
After checking out the cave, we did a short hike along the River Styx Spring Trail or Dixon Cave Trail (I can't remember which one we took) to the Green River Bluffs Trail back to the visitor's center. It was a pleasant walk in the woods. Briggs' favorite part was finding logs and rocks to climb on. After our little hike, Briggs bought a little Lego-type camping set at the gift shop with his souvenir money before we loaded back up to head the 3.5 hours to Knoxville, TN.
While on our way, we made reservations for dinner at Tupelo Honey Southern Kitchen and Bar in Market Square in Knoxville. It was a great little restaurant in a great little area of Knoxville. After dinner, we walked around Market Square a bit, popped into a few cute shops, and then headed to our Holiday Inn for the evening. This time, although we had a king bed, we set up Briggs on an air mattress on the floor instead.
We enjoyed a good night of sleep, a yummy hotel breakfast, and then made our way to the Knoxville Zoo for the day. As a zoo family, we always enjoy checking out zoos we've never been to before.
We really enjoyed the Knoxville Zoo. For a mid-market zoo, they had really nice enclosures, some fun animals, very helpful and engaging staff, and plenty to see and do. They also had some cool-looking enhancements under construction and a zip line that was closed, so might be worth a repeat visit in the future. Some of our highlights from the zoo were the very cute and active otters, the amphibian/reptile house, the monkey climbing enclosures over the walkways where we saw a monkey walking a "tightrope" over our heads, a fun playground with big slides that Briggs really enjoyed, and family favorites like the tigers and bears and...
the gorillas! The big apes are typically my very favorites.
They also had a bunch of super cute red pandas.
Even as tweenagers/teenagers, our kids can't go to a zoo without asking to ride the carousel. So they did.
We all enjoyed our zoo day. Once we had spent several hours walking around the zoo and seeing all the animals, it was time to finish our less than an hour drive to meet up with the Rays at our Smoky Mountain cabin. We grabbed some groceries on the way and were so excited to get to our rental and start spending time with our friends.
