I love the landscape here. From the brick-stacked rock formations rubbing shoulders with the fog line to the massive, subtly rippling waves of green lushness. Whenever I cross a state line, I’m pulled to learn the culture of a place, what is different here than what came before. One thing about Kentucky is the lean-to-like structures off the fronts of their houses. Think metal roofs and circular pylons, like an old hitching post. Old houses and new had this stretch-limo-like overhang, for what I imagined was staying dry during heavy thunderstorm rains.
To pass the final hour of the seven-hour drive to Cave City, Kentucky, Evelyn unpacked, and we played with her smallish rubber basketball. “Oofa” meant the person in the front passenger seat was ready for the ball to be thrown from her, and “foofah” meant she was ready for a toss back.
Impressively, the last hour flew by, with only two casualties: one throw slamming the side of my face and an out-of-bounds throw that meant tears and retrieving the wayward ball from the trunk at a gas station.
We’ve landed at the KOA. The view, impressive in the pictures, is even more extraordinary in person. Our cabin’s deck practically overhangs the edge of acres upon acres of meadow leading up to a mountainous tree ridgeline. My eyes have a 180-degree stretch of land, with a few extra-large, no-longer-used, rustic-looking, and dilapidated barns blending into the untouched-by-human-hand landscape.
I imagined deer would feed in the lower valleys as night fell, so I watched. As I reached the third paragraph, and Evelyn and Dave dug into a game of Crazy Eights, they came. Some head down and auntering, and others in a rocking-horse run across the field. I tried for a picture, but because of the dusk and the lens’s inability to focus, I took a picture of a dark brown splotch that, when I showed Dave, he thought looked like an up-close picture of a tick.
I’d better get over to the restroom for teeth brushing and a pre-bed potty. To the caves tomorrow!
Night night.
Oh. My. Goodness. I rerouted because of twinkles. Fireflies! Hundreds, thousands of them! What a magical nightcap to walk through a field of them to end the day.