It's Now or Never - 1 year country tour
Starting June 19th, my wife and I are taking our two kids on a trip around the country for a little over a year. The biggest unfortunate is that I'll be working full-time while we do it. This means th...
Forum Discussion
We live in the West and have been to nearly all the areas you are visiting here. But we just returned from a rare RV trip east of the Mississippi. Two of our favorite places visited on that trip are the Natchez Trace Parkway and Mammoth Cave National Park.
The Parkway runs from Natchez, MS, all the way to Nashville, TN. The road is two-lane, is controlled access with no stoplights, has 45 to 55 MPH speed limits, and is nearly deserted much of the year. But, because it avoids or is screened from most of the towns along the route, you really feel like you are traveling through a remote area. The NPS even has a Web page for RVers at Natchez Trace RVing.
Traveling the Trace is a great way to study early "western" American history, since this really was the first "American West." You can visit the inn where Meriwether Lewis committed suicide. I know it sounds morbid for kids, but it brings a new realization to the stress that he was under during his multiyear expedition. You can also see Indian mounds, sites along the Trail of Tears, antebellum plantations, Civil War battlefields, and many other historical attractions along or near the road. Riding bikes and hiking along portions of the Trace with your kids will give them a feel for how long it took to travel even a well-worn, heavily traveled, 450-mile trail in the early 1800's. And traveling the Trace in the spring with the dogwood, redbud, magnolia, and other spring flowering plants in bloom really puts the frosting on the cake!
Mammoth Cave is the largest cave in the world and is very different than Carlsbad, Wind Cave, or many of the other national park/monument caverns. Maybe the kids would enjoy one of the tours where you have to wear a hardhat, light, and crawl through passageways. That would really give them a feel for spelunking that they wouldn't get many other places.
The Parkway runs from Natchez, MS, all the way to Nashville, TN. The road is two-lane, is controlled access with no stoplights, has 45 to 55 MPH speed limits, and is nearly deserted much of the year. But, because it avoids or is screened from most of the towns along the route, you really feel like you are traveling through a remote area. The NPS even has a Web page for RVers at Natchez Trace RVing.
Traveling the Trace is a great way to study early "western" American history, since this really was the first "American West." You can visit the inn where Meriwether Lewis committed suicide. I know it sounds morbid for kids, but it brings a new realization to the stress that he was under during his multiyear expedition. You can also see Indian mounds, sites along the Trail of Tears, antebellum plantations, Civil War battlefields, and many other historical attractions along or near the road. Riding bikes and hiking along portions of the Trace with your kids will give them a feel for how long it took to travel even a well-worn, heavily traveled, 450-mile trail in the early 1800's. And traveling the Trace in the spring with the dogwood, redbud, magnolia, and other spring flowering plants in bloom really puts the frosting on the cake!
Mammoth Cave is the largest cave in the world and is very different than Carlsbad, Wind Cave, or many of the other national park/monument caverns. Maybe the kids would enjoy one of the tours where you have to wear a hardhat, light, and crawl through passageways. That would really give them a feel for spelunking that they wouldn't get many other places.
