Road Trip

6 states in 6 days! FL, GA, TN, KY, IN, and MI. Whew! So glad to be home. We made awesome time both ways despite the stops for food and gas. We went for a wedding and despite little time without family obligations we still managed to squeeze in a few touristy things.

On the way there we stopped at the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. It is the worlds longest cave system with 367 miles explored thus far. The temperature in the cave remains 56 degrees year round and because this is true Native American remanents have been found in the cave perfectly preserved dating back between 2000-4000 years. Pretty cool.

Inside the caves, the dark made picture taking pretty hard!
62 stairs led in and out of the mouth of the cave called "The Natural Entrance"

The National Park offers a multitude of free paths and bike trails. They also offer a bunch of cave tours that go from the basic self guided main trunk tour we took and get as complex as age/weight restricted spelunking tours including crawling, climbing and swimming! We also visited a chocolate factory in Indiana where you could see the factory, sample candies and check out this HUGE chocolate fountain!
Between pizza with family celebrating 3 birthdays and the rehearsal dinner we managed to sneak in a game of mini golf.
And because I am me I managed to drive 1200 miles to trade my beach for another beach. We drove to the "Dunelands" and into yet another National Park where we then climbed Mt.Baldy, a 126 foot sand dune on the Lake Michigan shore. The beach was beautiful and pictures cannot do it justice - but the water was frigid and these nasty little unidentified black bugs bit so hard if you stopped moving - that our beach time was walking time more than anything else. The west side of the dune, aka the up path, is covered in foliage. The beach side is just sand.
And lastly we went to a wedding! The reason for the trip, my cousin Amanda tied the knot after 8 years of dating her high school sweetheart Titus. They had a great photographer and I hope to get alot of those shots bc my camera could not handle the funky lighting at the reception whatsoever. However I do have one kind of fuzzy but still special picture. This is my grandpa with his granddaughters (minus one). The bride and the two in bridesmaids gowns are all sisters! We seldom get all of us in one spot at one time but growing up we were very close!