With a Tip of the Hat to Blatherskite and Derek Black, Here's Our Little DUDEFEST 2K9

One of the minor downsides to Laura starting her own daycare is that she's only going to be able to take off a single week each year for vacation. She doesn't HAVE to limit herself to a week, per se, but that was one of the aspects of Michelle's care that we truly appreciated, and so Laura's decided to adopt the policy as well. That leaves me with an extra week - soon to be 2 extra weeks, when I hit my 5-year anniversary with Baker & Daniels - of vacation that we all can't enjoy as a family. Certainly to be classified under the, "Small Price to Pay..." category, but still a bit of a bummer.

So, since I had this extra week to do something with this year, I decided to pack up the boys for a few days and take a Guys' Trip to have a manly-type adventure. Our destination: Cave City, KY. Cave City is probably best known as the "Gateway to Mammoth Cave." I have fond memories of Mammoth Cave, as my Grandma and Grandpa Keller took my brother and I to tour it when we were probably 8 and 6, respectively. I remember having a great time walking through it and discovering something that was fairly foreign to me at the time: a cave. I'd read about them, seen them depicted in movies, but hadn't been in one at that point, so I was hoping that, even though our boys had been to Marengo Cave, it'd still be an exciting trip for them.

As I researched Cave City, I found that it's a bit of a touristy destination, as well, so there would be plenty of activities to keep us occupied. There were riding stables (which, if you've read anything else I've posted recently, you know was a big hit with the boys), there were tons of hiking trails in the National Park surrounding the cave, and there were little parks/attractions like Dinosaur World and Guntown Mountain that would likely provide at least a bit of entertainment.

I tried booking us rooms at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Resort Park and the Wigwam Village, but neither had any availability. Sure, the more manly thing to do would've been to rough it at a campground, or rent a cabin; however, there are certain limitations to "roughing it" you have to observe with a 5 and a 3-year-old, and a campsite for 4 days in late October almost certainly exceeds those limitiations, and the "cabins" that seemed available in the area were most likely going to exceed those limitations (not to mention my personal limitation on being within a certain number of feet of some creepy, sketchy-looking and sounding people). So, we toned down the manliness a smidge by reserving 3 nights at the Super 8 Motel in Cave City. It was a decent spot, clean, reasonably priced, so I was happy with the compromise.

Here are a few pictures taken during our trip together...

We arrived in Cave City around 1PM CST Thursday afternoon, and immediately made our way over to the Jesse James Riding Stables at Kentucky Action Park. The boys were stoked right away due to the fact that they got to play with a kitten and its mother for a good 20 minutes while we waited for Brian, the ride guide, to make his way back from the Outlaw Cave tour he was conducting and down to the stables to lead us on our hour-long ride. Below is a shot of the woods in which we would ride, you can make out the trail that leads into them in the lower-left corner of the picture.



Jack getting his horse-management instructions from Brian the Cowboy (as he would become known by the boys), and then Shadow, the horse Kian and I got to ride. Jack got to go alone by virtue of his being *AHEM* "six years old," while Kian got the shaft and had to ride with boring ol' Dad. Jack's horse's name was Paris Hilton, and Brian made sure to make plenty of off-color (but, thankfully, nonsensical, to the boys) jokes about "pulling Paris' hair and tell her who's in charge." He actually was pretty funny and really engaged the boys, putting up with Kian's constant barrage of questions regarding the various wildlife that may or may not live in the woods, and whether or not they were afraid of the horses or if the horses were afraid of the wildlife.


Brian was kind enough to take the camera from me and snap some pictures of us all mounted up.

In probably one of the greatest moments of Kian's life, Brian offered to let him ride with him for about the last 1/3 of the trip. He galloped his horse, Dixie, several times which Kian went nuts over, constantly telling Brian they had to pass up the girl who was leading the pack of riders. Brian let Kian take the reins several times, and direct Dixie around the trail, which he also loved.

After the ride, we got ourselves checked into the hotel, and I unpacked our gear while the boys ate microwave popcorn and watched cartoons. This was one of the first areas in which they had the, "Oh CRAP, we're not at home right now" realizations when I informed them that there were only a limited number of kid-friendly channels we could watch, and none of them were airing Dora or Diego at that moment. The settled with Animal Planet, which I felt was pretty fitting.

We ate dinner later that evening, and I made another point to which I would stick during this vacation - NO corporate bullcrap restaurants. We were going to eat locally as much as we could, and eschew McDonald's, Wendy's, or any other restaurant we'd seen in Indy. We ate at a Mexican restaurant right by the hotel, which kinda felt like cheating this rule, because it was one of those universal Mexican restaurants, but since it didn't have a larger parent corporation as it's overarching operational entity (at least, not that I could tell) I felt the decision OK.

Friday morning, we got up, had breakfast at the hotel (one of those horribly unfulfilling breakfasts that are supposed to act as an allure to paying $35/night for your stay at a mediocre hotel), and made our way over to Mammoth Cave. Of course, it was raining the entire morning, with wavering intensity, but since we were going to be primarily in the cave, I didn't think it would be too big a deal. Well, little did I realize you stand outside waiting for the tour to start, and also make a half-mile hike down a path to the entrance of the cave. Oh well, still worth it, and we wouldn't have gotten as wet as we did had I tried to keep tighter reins on the boys and prevented them from splashing out in the rain puddles while we awaited the start of the tour.

The pictures above were taken as we waited, and directly below here is our descent into the cave entrance. That's Jack's hooded figure walking in front of me, so it gives you some perspective as to just how large this cave entrance is.

Just a little way into the cave, and already, Kian's taken off his hoodie and face-planted several times in the dirt. Oh well, we're men, right? A little dirt-stained outerwear is to be expected!

Here we are traversing a section of the cave known as "Fat Man's Misery." As a fat man, let me tell you, this portion of the cave is aptly named. We had maybe a 28-inch wide path cut from the stone through which we had to meander for a good 100-200 feet, all while ducking due to the 4-foot-tall ceiling. Combine those facts with the additional fact that you're in a tour group 120-people strong, and you get the idea why I started to wonder whether or not my clausterphobia was going to allow me to finish the tour without bashing my face against those tight-fitting walls.

Candle writing that used to be allowed by the African-American slaves who would guide tours through the cave. They allowed this as a means by which they could get some money, because they were unpaid for their guide services.

Kian had decided this light needed to be cleaned, so he was scraping its surface with a rock he found in the cave. I just liked the effect created by the "night vision" mode on our camera when I snapped this. Shortly after this picture was taken, we approached the last part of the tour, in which we basically ascended back up the 340 feet we'd descended below the surface of the cave in approximately 1/8th of the actual distance it took us to make that descent. The elevation is made up through a series of steeply-inclined paths and approximately 200 steps up a couple of different stairways built back up to the cave entrance (not to mention the stairs back up to the trail that's depicted up above). Why am I bringing this up, you ask? Well, I had to make this ascent while I carried Kian, who'd conveniently fallen asleep just before we started making our way back up. This part would've been difficult without the additional 30 or so pounds being carried in my arms; AND, it was further compounded by the fact that the cold that I'd developed was pretty much at it's apex of affliction, making my lung capacity about that of a Ziploc sandwich bag. I got all gung-ho and did the stairs up to the exit, plus those stairs you see above, without stopping, and by the time I got to the trail back up to the parking lot, I seriously thought I was on the verge of cardiac arrest. I had to make Jack wait with me as I breathed harder than I'd ever breathed in my life, surely inviting concern from the other tour members who walked past us as I panted for that sweet sweet oxygen. Fun times!

Jack showing you where we were.

This crazy tree was across the street from the sign pictured above.

The photos above were taken during our hike through the cave park on Saturday. I really wanted to get to more of the trails, as the descriptions in the park maps sounded great, but the boys weren't really feeling it that day. The big hole in the ground is an Indiana Bat cave that was on the one trail we did hike. The boys were more interested in sweeping leaves from the stairs on the deck and built into the trail than they were actually hiking it.

These last few pictures were from Dinosaur World, which is a big park with a bunch of "life-sized" dinosaur statues and some fossil-dig sites. The boys really enjoyed this, and it was pretty interactive, which made for a nice wrap-up to our trip to Cave City.

Not depicted here are the trips to the Mammoth Cave Wildlife Museum (which, I guess, qualified, due to the number of dead, stuffed animals they had behind glass; it creeped me out, but the boys were into it), our viewing of Where The Wild Things Are (RULED!!!), and our 2nd horseback ride (on which Kian fell asleep about 15 minutes in, and I had to navigate the horse while managing a 30-pound limp dishrag in my lap). Again, the kids were great throughout this trip, and got many many compliments on their good behavior from people we encountered during it. I was proud of them for being so good for me while I made this solo-parent venture with them! I can't wait for Dudefest 2K10!

(K)