Roll to the Hole Part Deux

[twr1776]

Brian, Greg, and I were part of a group from the ADV riders forum that were heading to Mammoth Cave in March of this year. We trailered the KLR's to Brians Thursday night and hoped to leave Friday AM and ride to Bedford. Friday AM was around 32 degrees and we decided to trailer to the Rosemount and at least get in an afternoon ride which we did but the temps were low 40's at best for our afternoon ride. Pretty chilly, Sat am we met part of the ADV group in Bedford and the temps were slightly better maybe mid forties to low 50's but the Bedford forecast was for approx 8" of snow Saturday night into Sunday. We ended up meeting the rest of the ADV group in southern Indiana and made it into Kentucky but decided to head back to Bedford and dropped Brian off and Greg and I got home late Saturday night. Bullet dodged.

Brian and I did make it back this weekend and the temps were much better and the Kentucky roads were outstanding. Not many show up on roadmaps but Brians GPS tracks from the ADV group were spot on. A few pics from the weekend...........

Green River ferry by the Park, it is a paddlewheel type.







We ate lunch here Saturday and they had a breakfast buffet we went to Sun AM. mighty tasty For those who have been, Cave City KY is not the mecca of fine dining IMHO



We discovered this on Brians bike Sat afternoon, mmmmm feathers. I was needless to say not in front and Brian did not notice anything. Must have been slice and dice.



The Original Entrance to Mammoth Cave



The New Entrance, we took this tour. We went down some tightly packed semi vertical steps in between rock to approx 200' below the surface.

[twr1776]

Whose that guy



More random photos, not very great, lighting not the best. Guess you had to be there. I think it is the largest cave in the world, approx 400 miles of tunnels.

[bwringer]

Tim is at his very happiest when his motorcycle is on a boat. Unfortunately, the other ferry (Houchin's Ferry) in the park was closed.

If any of you are members over at ADVrider.com, check the regional threads for upcoming rides. Very often, people post up FANTASTIC routes in GPX files that you can load into a GPS. The site is crawling with hardcore GPS geeks who love to explore and share.

Since ADVrider.com is focused on dual-sport riding these normally include gravel and dirt roads, but many times they also provide pavement routes. You can usually figure out a route around the gravel if you like.

I'm using an app called "Dual Sport Maps" on my Android phone. Basically, the maps are stored in the phone so no data connection is needed. The open-source maps are incredibly accurate, and the route shows up as a nice fat blue line -- very easy to follow.

All in all, a fantastic weekend of riding. Kentucky is stuffed with excellent roads, but they seem rather ashamed of them -- the only routes that appear on state maps or any locally available maps are the larger highways where the land has been stomped flat and the road made as straight and boring as possible. You have to special-order real maps ahead of time.

And on this ride, we actually stopped to look at something interesting, which is very rare.