Vacation: Survivor Edition

In hopes of supporting Vivian Carter's new sober lifestyle, we invited her along on our family's spring break trip to Mammoth Cave National Park near Bowling Green, Kentucky. Although L'il Viv prefers to experience nature through her car's windshield and laptop screensavers, she gamely agreed to accompany us to this dry county for a week's worth of exercise and fresh air.

Shout Out to the National Park Service: Mammoth Cave National Park includes nearly 58,000 acres of wilderness and hiking trails. The property's lodge includes a restaurant and cafe, and seems to be very green and eco-friendly. Very affordable also, since it's underwritten by tax dollars. This park is a testament to tax money well spent. If we voters could specify where our tax dollars go I would support the National Park Service.

And now back to relishing the misery of close friends.

We five bold souls took lovely cave tours, including the four and one half hour Grand Avenue Tour, which had us all hiking four miles, hundreds of feet underground. (That's a postive thing.)
The real karma-buster was our family's reaction to poor L'il Viv losing her hiking mojo after two hours, subsequently tottering and sputtering like a short-circuited Roomba throughout the last part of the tour. If the ranger guides had offered to bear her out on a stretcher, she would have sold her Beanie Baby collection to fund their tip.

In addition to being very steep and slippery with dripping water, some of the cave passages were extremely narrow. Warnings were given to the morbidly obese and chronically infirm to avoid this particular expedition.

That said, picture a weary and struggling (non-obese) Viv tripping backwards into a pair of nine-year-old twins and collapsing the back of our tour line like a strand of dominoes. I am hooting like a hyena remembering. This makes me a bad person, and I deserve to live the rest of my natural life without Velveeta cheese grits.

Not only did we hike underground, we also explored many miles of outdoor trails. Sadly the birdsong was drowned out by L'il Viv's huffing and puffing that the fresh air and brisk hikes were killing her.

Vivian Carter twittered that she is still searching online for a commemorative t-shirt that reads: I went to Kentucky and all I got was this lousy body bag.

Well, I'm off to jog around the neighborhood. Some of us want to maintain the good health habits we enjoyed on our vacation.

Have a great day!
Big Vivi