My first tourist stop of the day was the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Chevrolet Corvettes are assembled in Bowling Green and, over the years, the Vette has become an institution so they decided to create what is thought to be the only museum in the world dedicated to just one model of car here.

As in most car museums, many of the cars are displayed in appropriate dioramasbut, I must admit, that I probably would not have visited if it had not been for the publicity the museum received last year when a sinkhole opened up under its main showroom and eight Corvettes fell into it. This happened inside thiswhich looks like this.Sinkholes are very common in this limestone area and, in February of 2014, one happened to open up right in the middle of this display area. You can see video showing what it looked like before, the security video of the sinkhole forming and a long section on the recovery here. Of the eight cars, five were so badly damaged they cannot be restored, one has already been restored and the other two will be restored but all eight are currently displayed in the same locations that they were in when the collapse occurred.My second stop was at Mammoth Cave National Park about 20 miles up the road from Bowling Green. Mammoth cave has been known for over 200 years and, so far, 405 miles of passageways and caves have been discovered. The National Park offers guided tours and I took a two-hour tour that showed us a variety of rooms in the cave and also some formations. The National Park Service’s mission is to educate and conserve and so, unlike commercial cave tours, the lighting in the cave was just enough to see the areas we were in and allow us to tour safely. The ranger leading the tour was very entertaining and, being an ex-teacher, he was also able to explain clearly the ways in which the caves formed, why different areas looked so different, why the cave is in five layers etc. etc. Since we were not allowed to use flash (so we didn’t blind each other) most of my photos are just unrecognizable shapes but this one, showing a 50 foot high formation called Frozen Niagara, came out OK I have wanted to visit Mammoth Cave for a while so I very much enjoyed my day.

After leaving the National Park I drove to Somerset, Kentucky which, although it is in the same state, is in a different time zone. so I am finally back in the Eastern time zone.

Today’s map and video are here.