Author: Gowan

I am the owner of this place
Posted on

Kentucky Backwoods 2

Traffic Jam on Ugly Creek Road

Ugly Creek Road is far from the sketchiest byway I’ve navigated in my travels, but it does offer enough soft spots, washouts and creek fords to merit close attention and switching Peggy (my 3/4 ton Ram pickup) into 4 wheel drive.

Much of the creek bed is dry and lined with sand from the decomposing sandstone cap rock that form the ridges above.

The key to the geology of Mammoth Cave is that there are two layers of rock beneath these Kentucky hills: a wide belt of limestone capped by a layer of sandstone & shale. The cap rock acts like the lid on a Tupperware bowl, protecting the limestone beneath. Where this cap rock has been compromised in spots, water can make it’s way down to dissolve the limestone layer, forming voids. Since most of the cap rock remains intact, it acts as a roof to protect the limestone from too much erosion, so you end up with caves instead of canyons.

Continue reading “Kentucky Backwoods 2”

Posted on

Kentucky Backwoods 1

This is a short series of posts about things discovered along the way.

I came to central  Kentucky to visit Mammoth Cave National Park, and spent a week in the area North of the park but only a day in the cave. This is the part of traveling America I like best – the unplanned adventures and unexpected discoveries that come when you have more than enough time in your schedule for such things to occur organically.
What follows are a series of short passages from this time in the Kentucky hill country:

  1. A Sailor Home from the Sea
  2. Traffic Jam on Ugly Creek Road
  3. Traces of the Past
  4. Relighting the Fire

A Sailor Home from the Sea

The Park Service scatters a load of crusher run gravel occasionally on an old road that skirts the North side of the Mammoth Cave property.  I suspect the motivation is mostly to allow fire crews to protect the area, but the road also provides access to  a few backcountry trailheads and remote cemeteries from before the government acquired the Park.

The road to Wilkins Cemetary, somewhere near Stockholm KY

Continue reading “Kentucky Backwoods 1”

Posted on

Below the Surface

With more legal paperwork complete and the camper freshly repaired, I turned north to the hills of central Kentucky. The plan was to escape the summer heat and thunderstorms that had come to the South by going underground at Mammoth Cave National Park.

Typical of US National Parks, Mammoth Cave offers really nice tent camping sites which I had used on my previous visit, but no sites for RVs with water and electric hookups. Because of this I opted for a nearby state park, just a few miles North of the National Park boundary. Nolin Lake State Park, near Bee Spring, Kentucky is a small but well-maintained park on the Nolin Lake reservoir. The state park adjoins land controlled by the Corps of Engineers, who are responsible for the dam as well. Continue reading “Below the Surface”