A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 165 miles from Park City, Kentucky to Elberfeld, Indiana.
Month: August 2024
Travel from Park City, Kentucky to Elberfeld, Indiana
We drove our coach 165 miles, about three hours of driving, from Park City, Kentucky to Elberfeld, Indiana.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading northwest:
An interactive map:
Toading up:
I-65 South:
Bridge:
Fun with zoom:
Exit to a service area:
Huck’s service plaza:
Lunch:
“The Journey is My Home”; that could be our motto:
Back to our coach:
I-165 North:
We had a fun new issue: we turned on our generator while driving, so we could run our air conditioners, it being rather hot. But when we tried to turn it off via the switch on the dash, it didn’t turn off. I also tried using the Coach Proxy web app, which also failed, and reported an error:
This has been a problem since; we’ll probably get it looked at when we go back to Red Bay in December. In the meantime, I have to open the generator compartment (once we stop, of course) and turn it off via the switch on the generator itself. A bit of a pain.
Owensboro water tower:
Rusty twin bridges over the Ohio River:
Ohio River:
“More to Discover in Indiana”:
I-69 North:
Road to the campground:
The GPS alleged that the road had a 10 ton weight limit, but it didn’t (I knew about that ahead of time from reviews of the campground):
Pond with water lilies:
Entering the campground; no human interaction required:
We just headed to our site:
2024 travel map
Back in January I published a map of our planned travels for 2024. We’ve mostly stuck to that plan, though have changed a few stops. Here’s an updated map of our motorhome travel route this year; click or tap for a higher-resolution image:
I thought it’d be fun to share a Google Maps edition too; an interactive map with markers for our stops. Click or tap this link to view the map.
Without the above image to guide you, the east coast part of the Google map would look like a random distribution of markers!
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park
We visited the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park in Kentucky, a small park with the country’s first monument to Lincoln, enclosing the Symbolic Cabin, a reconstruction of the tiny cabin where Lincoln was born. The memorial was built between 1909 and 1911.
56 steps up to the memorial, one for each year of Lincoln’s life:
The symbolic cabin inside the memorial:
Peeking inside:
Model of the cabin:
Info outside:
Boardwalk to the visitor center:
Visitor center:
Parents and kids:
Passport stamp:
Gift shop:
Family Bible:
More exhibits:
Table made by Lincoln’s father:
Boundary oak tree:
Model of the memorial:
Our first Buc-ee’s
Buc-ee’s is a popular gas station and convenience store chain, based in Texas, with some in nearby states. It is known for a large number of pumps and large stores, serving brisket, beef jerky, etc, and a beaver mascot. Their branch in Sevierville, Tennessee is the world’s largest convenience store.
We’ve driven past Buc-ee’s gas stations several times, but hadn’t stopped in one until this occasion in Smiths Grove, Kentucky. It isn’t one of the largest ones, but still an interesting experience.
We can’t stop at Buc-ee’s when driving our motorhome, as they are actively hostile to larger vehicles, not allowing 18-wheelers, and not accommodating large RVs like ours. But we visited this one in our pickup truck.
Gas pumps:
Mammoth Cave National Park
We visited Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It is notable as the longest cave system in the world, with over 400 miles of passages.
Visitor center:
Mammoth cave has several guided tours available. We did the “Domes and Dripstones” tour, which required taking buses to a cave entrance:
Down into a sinkhole:
Cave entrance:
Looking down:
Underground ranger talk:
Not too bad a picture of me:
Lots of steps:
Historic graffiti:
Very flat cave ceiling:
Ranger talk area:
More steps:
The “Frozen Niagara” formation:
Vertical panorama of a dome:
An interesting cave, but we’ve seen nicer-looking ones. Just shows that size isn’t everything.
Baseball: Bowling Green Hot Rods
In addition to attending major league baseball games while traveling around the country, we also plan to attend some minor league games. Minor league teams often have fun names, and their ballparks are smaller, so we can often get seats front row behind home plate, something that would be prohibitively expensive in a MLB park.
We went to the Bowling Green Hot Rods’ ballpark in Bowling Green, Kentucky, to attend a game. But it was cancelled before starting due to weather. We had expected the game to have a rain delay midway, but they decided to not even start. We got to see the ballpark, at least.
The Hot Rods are the High-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays:
Ballpark:
Thousand Trails Diamond Caverns RV & Golf Resort
We stayed at Thousand Trails Diamond Caverns RV & Golf Resort in Park City, Kentucky. (Campground Reviews listing.)
Convenient to Mammoth Cave National Park, and free with our membership, but rather unlevel.
Dates:
- Check in: 2024-07-07
- Check out: 2024-07-12
- 5 nights
Weather:
- Partly cloudy, some rain
- High temps 82-90°F, lows 66-71°F
- Little wind, gusts to 19 MPH
Noise:
- No road noise
- Occasional distant train horn noise
- Minimal neighbor noise
Site:
- #503, back-in, gravel
- Needed to disconnect toad, parked in front of coach
- Rather unlevel site; high in front and passenger side; back wheels would be off the ground, so used air leveling
- Gravel driveway about 65 feet long by 22 feet wide
- Immediate neighbor on passenger side; 50 feet to neighbor on driver side
- Picnic table
- No trees
- Unclean site; cigarette butts, bottle caps, etc.
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, conveniently located
- 60 PSI water, conveniently located
- Good sewer connection, conveniently located (1 10-foot pipe needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- T-Mobile: 15 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
- Verizon: 10 Mbps down, 5 Mbps up, 45 ms ping
- AT&T: 2 Mbps down, 0.01 Mbps up, 200 ms ping; unreliable
- Starlink: not used
- Campground Wi-Fi: paid, not used
Amenities:
- Garbage dumpsters
- Pool
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Close to Mammoth Cave NP
This is an older Thousand Trails campground, and like most of the older ones, it needs some serious TLC. Most sites are seasonal/annual so there were only a handful of sites available when we arrived, with most of them being either too short or on a really egregious slope (or both). We found the one site that would fit us (503) but it was so unlevel we couldn’t use our hydraulic levelers and had to use the air leveling, which is less preferred. They obviously had some serious rain recently because there were a couple of sites showing extreme erosion and I worried about the stability of the terrace they were on. But for a short stay to visit Mammoth Cave, it was serviceable. We camped at Thousand Trails Diamond Caverns RV & Golf Resort in a Motorhome.
Tip for Other Campers: There’s a new Buc-ee’s not far away and Bowling Green has pretty much everything you could want….
Campground map:
An interactive map:
Our site:
Utilities:
Air leveling, with the rear wheels raised as high as they can go (and jacks up):
Other sites:
Swimming pool:
Playground:
Mini golf:
Clubhouse and quiet room:
We probably won’t stay here again, though it’s hard to argue with free.
Video: Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to Park City, Kentucky motorhome travel timelapse
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 227 miles from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to Park City, Kentucky.
Travel from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to Park City, Kentucky
We drove our coach 227 miles, about four hours of driving, from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to Park City, Kentucky.
Here’s a map showing our route, heading northwest:
An interactive map:
Dollywood:
Gocart track:
MagiQuest:
Leaning building:
Crossover intersection:
I-40 West:
Knoxville:
Fun with zoom:
Fuel stop:
A tank or something on a truck:
Our coach:
We went to the Iron Skillet restaurant at the truck stop for lunch:
Truckers chapel:
“Enter Central Time”:
Fun with zoom:
Rest area:
Monterey:
Livingston Highway:
Paladin asleep:
Fun with zoom:
Celina Highway:
Celina:
Horses sign:
Bathroom stop at a gas station:
“Welcome to Kentucky”:
A pond:
A horse and buggy sign:
Fun with zoom:
Paladin asleep:
Entering Mammoth Cave National Park:
The RV park’s office is across the road from the campground, at the Diamond Caverns attraction:
Paladin sat on the dash for the drive from the office to the campground:
Welcome:
We untoaded here:
Following the coach:
Our site:
