On the Road Again: MA to KY

"Excuse me, do you have any airplane badges?" Halfway through the flight she just perked up and asked the flight attendant. I think she's ready to add some more bling to her Junior Ranger vest!

We've landed in Boston and are in a cab heading back to the trailer after an easy flight. We're thankful to have family there to bump up the thermostat and warm up chicken enchiladas as we put the kids right to bed, and that, despite being challenging at times, this past week's delay really didn't affect us too much.

Some prep and family this weekend, then back on the road!

#travelwithkids #familytravel

100' between us and the pavement. I was glad to find a lot less snow than I'd expected and the soft mulch beneath the wheels mostly frozen. Project Extrication begins tomorrow. We'll be spending today trying to figure out where to fit all these Christmas presents and getting rid of kid clothes that used to fit two months ago! #nomadproblems #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #airstreaminlesssnowthanidfeared #timetoheadsouth

Good to be home. The days have been productive. Tomorrow we load the bikes and rocketbox back up, re-mount the WD hitch hardware I removed when painting the tongue, get the trailer back onto pavement, top off the propane and finish a mod to the kids' bed now that we have two "toddlers." Campground booked 1/3 of the way between here and Lexington, KY for Monday night. #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #ontheroadagain

For the first year on the road, we had a great Guava Lotus porta crib with a side zip panel pushed into the back of the rear corner bed. The 6 month old baby slept in there protected from the nocturnal flailings of her 3 yr old sister. Now at 18 months, Mae's emerged from the crib and sleeps alongside Wynne, so I built a little partition along the back (we store our bedding for the lounge and extra TP back there!) and a bookshelf at her feet (our Reflectix rolls go in the "tunnel"). Simple, but should get us through the next year! #airstreamwithkids #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #travelwithkids #familytravel #fulltimefamilies #trailerbaby #okaytoputbabyinacorner

"Hello" from the southern end of the Delaware Water Gap. It's not as blustery as it looks in the video. As a little glimpse into my mind, I couldn't sleep the other night because I was so excited about making this. Volume up!!!

It ain't glamorous, but we're back on the move! Four states today (MA, CT, NY, PA) and three tomorrow (PA, MD, WV). Our max is usually three hours, so these five hour days feel a bit rough (on ourselves and the kids), but things will slow down after Lexington, KY. #airstream #airstreaminsnow #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #delawarewatergap

USA! USA! Two American icons that go perfectly together, @airstream_inc and @martinguitar! I honestly had no idea where our route was taking us today, though Nazareth, PA rang a bell. We passed the sign for Martin Guitars at 65 mph and looped back around at the next exit. No time for the factory tour today, but I've built one of their acoustic guitar kits and seen lots of pics from the factory, so soaking up some ancient wood molecules from the impressive museum and replacing my favorite Martin hat that I lost about 5 years ago from the gift shop would have to do. I tried to explain to Wynne that my '69 Brazilian Rosewood D-28 would have been built right here in Nazareth 3 years before I was born, but she just wanted to play in the snow in the parking lot. #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #martinguitars #nazarethpa

Adding a stop at the Martin Guitar factory on top of an almost 6 hour driving day yesterday, basically guaranteed we'd be pulling in after dark. Oh, and we had no idea where we could camp with most CG's closed for the winter. That is, until we got a Facebook message from a follower offering a driveway for the night in Morgantown, WV. The timing couldn't have been better. Around 6 pm with the kids starting to lose it, we found a pullout and made mac and cheese before getting everyone into pajamas. Back in the car, they both fell right to sleep as we drove the last hour in the blissfully silent darkness. We were greeted warmly by strangers from the Internet (who @advodna_ann had vetted thoroughly on Facebook), shown where to back in and fed a delicious meal of homemade chicken noodle soup and skillet cornbread after transferring the kids to their beds in the trailer. Thanks for saving the day, Greg and Lindsey! #martinguitars #nazarethpa #lifeontheroad #travelwithkids #familytravel #moochdocking #iloveitwhennoplancomestogether

I realize averaging a little over 300 miles a day is nothing for a lot of people, but it pushed us pretty hard. A five hour drive on Google takes us from 9 am to 6 pm since we pretty much need to stop for an hour for every hour we drive while Mae's not napping well in the car. It'll all settle in and change over the course of the next year - at least we can be sure of that - and now we're a bit caught up to our planned scheduled. Anyway, after grabbing a spot at the empty Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY right next to the playground, our pace will be slowing down significantly. #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #lexington #lexingtonky

Uh, yeah, this is gonna cost us. #letsjustpokeintothegiftshop #kentuckyhorsepark #littlegirlslikehorses #downsizingfail

#itsfiveoclocksomewhere #butitwasteninthemorninginkentucky Woodford is one of my favorites, and if we meet up in the next couple weeks, I may still have some of the bottle of Double Oaked I left the distillery with. Nice tour and tasting. #woodfordreserve #bourbontrail #bourbon #kybourbon

How many moms have had this kind of morning? #drinkingonthejob #familytravel #travelwithkids #woodfordreserve #bourbon #bourbontrail #kybourbon

Sometimes stopping for the kids is inconvenient, other times it's needed just as you're passing the exit for the distillery @lostworldluis told you to stop at the night before. While the Willett Distillery has its own brand, its primary operations are as the Kentucky Bourbon Distillers bottling products like Noah's Mill (which we grabbed a bottle of!) for others. The massive white buildings in the background are just a few of the warehouses belonging to the adjacent Heaven Hill Distillers, the seventh largest producer of alcohol in the world. A (non-toxic) black mold found naturally in the Kentucky soil thrives on ethanol fumes and can be seen staining the frames of all the warehouse windows. #kybourbon #bourbon #bourbontrail #distillery #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife

Some people are surprised that we often know where we'll be months ahead of time, but for us, planning helps us figure out what's possible. Can we get from CA to Alaska in 3 months averaging about 40 miles a day? Can we get from Alaska to Massachusetts in time to spend Halloween with family? Or in this case, can we get from Boston to Austin in a little under two weeks (without driving ourselves crazy or feeling like we missed everything)?
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Well, despite starting out a week behind, our planning said it could be done. Still, somehow, we totally missed the presence of Mammoth Caves National Park on our route! No problem, the plan is just a framework, so we pushed Nashville a day and arrived in time for the last "Frozen Niagara" (a name chosen by the original private tour operator purely for its marketing zing since Niagara Falls was the top tourist destination at the time) guided tour into the caves, and Wynne snagged another Junior Ranger badge - I wanna say lucky number 13.
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Links between the various cave systems in the area have been found over the years to connect more than 400 miles of caves within an average depth of only 200 ft below the surface. Remember that National Corvette Museum that had a sinkhole open up underneath a showroom of irreplaceable cars? That was in Bowling Green, KY just up the road!
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#mammothcaves #mammothcavesnationalpark #kentucky #ky #findyourpark #nps #juniorranger #childhoodunplugged #familytravel #travelwithkids #fulltimefamilies #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife

Beautiful (but cold! 26 degrees!) morning beside the Green River in Kentucky. Upon arriving at the visitor center at Mammoth Caves NP, we were told that two of the three CG's were closed but one 1st/1st was still open. It wasn't until we loaded back up to head there after our tour that we realized it only had 12 sites and "does not accommodate large trailers or RV's." In reality, the only prohibitive part was the super steep entrance road which ends directly into the river where, until it was suspended by the government shutdown in 2013 and never reopened, a ferry took vehicles across the river. Besides some stinky brakes, down was no problem. Oh, other than needing six (!) blocks under the curbside to level ourselves in the site. Will report later on whether we make it back up to the top! #airstream #liveriveted #myrivetedlife #ky #kentucky #mammothcaves #mammothcavesnationalpark #greenriver