This fall, Toby and I took a 6 week trip through the south to see how we liked simply wandering with no agenda or specific destination fixed. For those of you who are curious about what retirement will be like and think they may wish to travel the US, I would urge you to take a little trip to try it out.

We loved it. It took awhile to feel comfortable leaving everything behind, but we adjusted reasonably quickly. We traveled in our motor home with our 2 cats, who also had to adjust. And they did, albeit reluctantly.

The photos attached to this summary show bits of the interior of Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. I have never been a caver, and I am slightly claustrophobic. But this is a wonderful place and I highly recommend it. Well run, this federal park has all the amenities a traveler would want: a hotel, cabins, tent sites and RV sites. It is on a vast piece of land and there are numerous guided tours to choose from. Mammoth Cave is like a giant bowl of spaghetti, with criss crossing tunnels that are as deep as 3000 feet. It is still being explored by cavers. Tours can be short, only an hour, or as long as 6-8 hours. You can choose tours that are entirely stand up tours, or if you are really a caver, you can do tours where you slither on your tummy in spaces only 10" tall. The rangers and descriptive information are very clear and it is a fascinating experience. We spent 4 days there and hope to return.

If you would like to hear more about our trip, contact me by email (barb@horton-brasses.com) and I will send you my journal, which I wrote as I went along. It covers the experiences and highlights of what I was feeling and what we saw and visited.

I guess it shows that we like to travel a bit. Heres a map of where we have been so far.