October 12 - “Even Underground”

It was a lot warmer today than the past few days. 41 degrees. Warmed up even more pretty quickly, though.

 

But then we crawled down into a hole that stays at 54 degrees all year. It was a bit chilly down there. It was an interesting excursion, though. We were able to amble around in the semi-darkness while Chris attempted to take pictures. I think we got a few good ones, though. Mammoth Cave. Check.

 

On the way back south and west, Chris noticed a sign for an Amish country store. Why not?  One of the best stops of the trip. We ordered a sandwich for lunch. Huge thing on homemade bread. Yum. And we had to get some banana bread. Oh, some raisin cinnamon bread. All homemade, of course. I would definitely frequent that place … if we lived in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, just north of Tennessee. Hmm. That sounds like a good ol’ Country-western song …

 

Since we were in an off-the-beaten-track mood anyway, we stumbled across a brand-new area that just got affiliated with the National Park Service. It is a random battlefield called Parker’s Crossroads, somehow associated with the Civil War battle of Shiloh. It came up as right off the road we were on, anyway, so … here we go. The site itself was just the visitor center. Well, they did have maps that you could follow out to areas of the battle located in nearby towns. And they did have for sale a 60-minute tape tour of the whole thing. We didn’t go on the whole thing. We didn’t go on anything. We did walk through the museum and check out the artifacts, though.

 

Next came the final leg of what had been a really long drive. All the way from Mammoth Cave in Kentucky to Memphis, Tennessee. We were tired.

 

Now, we did make it to Memphis and checked into the hotel. But the room had no hot water coming out of the faucet in the sink. So they moved us to another room, but it had not been cleaned. Dirty towels on the bathroom floor, bed unmade. So they upgraded us to a suite. But it had food between the sheet and mattress pad, there was a bug with pinchers in the bed, and the shower was actually moldy. Strike three. And the worst thing about it all? I spent the last three innings of the Astros incredible comeback walkoff game dealing with a bad hotel. This time I told the desk clerk to just give us a refund. He obliged with no further comment. We drove another hour to get another hotel. This one was pretty nice. Glad we moved.

 

Romans 10:10 says, “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”

 

Father, thank you yet again for the chance to see something so awesome as that cave. Even underground your world is amazing. Amen.