So nice and quiet last night at the Mammoth Cave campground. It's been so long since we heard bird singing in the morning that it woke Eleanor up early. Morning birdsong has become unfamiliar to us, since we've been parked by highways and in the desert for the last two months.

The Frozen Niagara tour was great. A bit claustrophobic at the beginning, but really terrific. We can highly recommend it if you visit Mammoth Cave.

We didn't stick around the park after the tour, because late last night I reserved a spot for myself to tour the Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling Green. I had decided I really couldn't leave Kentucky without seeing it. Eleanor graciously volunteered to stay in the trailer with Emma for the entire two hours it would take me to do the tour, so we parked it in a far corner of the factory lot and they hung back to do some homeschooling work.

It worked out well, because as soon as we arrived the thunderstorms came crashing down. It wasn't weather I wanted to tow in. But Eleanor and Emma were snug in the trailer and I was having a BLAST checking out the very cool factory tour.

They also make the Cadillac XLR in that factory, but on a separate line. I wish I could show you photos from the tour but they are strict about no cameras, no cell phones, no PDAs, no anything, inside the plant. Trust me, it's worth the $5 for the tour. I left the building wanting a Caddy XLR for my very own, but at $77k apiece I don't see it in my immediate future. But I did get a freebie postcard.

I was tempted to just stay in the parking lot overnight because the thunderstorms were still raging at 3pm when I was back from the tour. But I didn't think they'd appreciate that, especially since we were in the "GM CARS ONLY" lot with our Nissan. (The "non-GM" lot was full.) They seem to take that sort of thing seriously at car factories...

Thunderstorms and traffic and accidents left us far short of our goal tonight. That's the way it goes. We're spending the night at a Cracker Barrel tonight, and we hope to reach Gulf Shores, AL tomorrow. Then we'll slow down for a while. All this driving has us a bit loopy.