Bats and Horses

Put me in, Coach!

From Abraham Lincoln Birthplace NHP, we headed north to Louisville. Our next stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum. Many years ago, before basketball was king, the boys played a few seasons of Little League. And at the time, Uncle K talked about us all going to Louisville to check out the factory. So, it was especially fitting for us to visit now.

My Old Kentucky Home

First thing this morning we checked out of our room at the Mammoth Cave Hotel and hit a drive-thru in Cave City for breakfast since we were going to lose an hour traveling to Abraham Lincoln Birthplace NHP. 

Going Underground

When I was planning out our travel itinerary, I asked M to research the cave tours at Mammoth Cave National Park and pick out the ones that looked interesting. In no time at all, he handed me the names of the tours that he wanted to do. Now, it's really not that hard to come up with a short list when your sole criterion is the word "strenuous" in the description of difficulty! Thanks for taking your not-as-young-as-we-used-to-be parents into consideration, son!

Waiting for the Grand Avenue Tour to start

Two of the tours he picked weren't feasible because we don't have ankle-high hiking boots. Either one would have been fun to do since both involved real spelunking - climbing, crawling, etc. Instead, I bought advance tickets online for the other two on his list... the "very strenuous" Grand Avenue Tour in the morning and the plain ol' "strenuous" Violet City Lantern Tour in the afternoon.

Time Travelers

First thing this morning, we said goodbye to my folks and headed for parts unknown... to us, at least! Any place south and east of Champaign-Urbana is unexplored territory!

What a difference a year makes!

Mounds and Memorials

Boys: What are we doing today?

Me: First stop is a few minutes away, just on the other side of the Mississippi River... Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. It's a World Heritage Site, too!

Boys: Mounds?! *groan* 

Such negativity! I assured them that this place was much more interesting than our first encounter with mound builders at Effigy Mounds National Monument in 2011 (read that blog post here). That episode is not-so-fondly remembered as our worst national park visit EVER. We hiked uphill in hot, humid weather and battled blood-sucking mosquitoes to see grass-covered bumps which didn't look like much of anything from ground level.  

OK, so maybe their groaning this morning was justified...

Meet Me in St. Louis

About a week before we came back to Illinois, my parents received news that one of their dear friends had passed away. They wanted to attend the memorial service on June 27 in Columbia, MO – but didn’t want to cut our visit with them short. Knowing how close they were to their friend and his family, we totally understood. Since we were planning a day trip down to Springfield anyway and the Cubs just so happened to be playing the Cardinals in St. Louis, it was easy to find a way to entertain ourselves while my mom and dad were out of town. And thanks to a couple of great guys from my hometown, we were able to get tickets to the game tonight!

It started to rain as we were driving to Springfield. Actually, torrential downpour is more accurate – the scary kind where your windshield wipers cannot go fast enough, and semi-trucks are kicking up more water on top of that. If only there were a way to import some of that rain to California!

Home Cookin'

It's been a while since I last posted here on the blog. We did have plans for another Saiki-delic road trip through Arizona, West Texas, and southern New Mexico over spring break. The first stop was going to be watching the Cubs play a couple of spring training games with R's brother K, but four days before we were supposed to meet him in Phoenix, we got a late night phone call that he had suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital.