Road Trip With The Boys

Jodi and Kate are off to see Taylor Swift tonight, so I decided to set up a road trip with the boys to give them something exciting to do over shut down week.

The twins were both participating in Dublin's Fourth of July parade, so we couldn't leave until Thursday. Sam marched with the Cub Scouts:

and Kate with the Dublin Youth Athletics (lacrosse):

Thursday we headed south. Our first destination was Mammoth Caves. I was a little nervous at signing the boys up for a two hour tour, when neither boy had ever been underground. Would they get claustrophobic?


Leaving the light behind:

and heading into the darkness:

I needn't have worried about the boys, they really enjoyed the trip. Several times in the darkness, Henry said, "I LOVE this trip!"

What I don't love is taking pictures in the dark with an iPhone, no flash.

You can tell this is Sam by the silhouette of his hat:

Henry is counting the years until he can do the Wild Cave tour, six hours of crawling through small passages... for those 16 and over.

We took the short hop from Mammoth Cave to Bowling Green to stay the night. Friday, we continued south, stopping at the welcome center across the Alabama state line:

But we weren't down south to see rockets, but something better. First we stopped for lunch. I thought the kids would be excited that we had found a Cici's, but Sam was crashing:

Henry was raring to go on to the Barber Vintage Motorsports museum:

Sam did better than I thought in the museum. He was game to go along as Henry and I checked out all of the incredible motorcycles and cars:

I used to want one of these Buells, probably for the best that I never got one:

Who didn't want a BMW P/D GS?

Three wheels!

I had a Honda CB750, but not anywhere as nice as this one:

Who doesn't want a BMW R90S?

It's like a Christmas tree of bikes:

Team Honda:

I read Jim Rogers's book Investment Biker years ago, and here's his BMW:

A lot of work has gone into the displays here:

This dessert racer KTM has seen some fast miles:

This Yamaha has seen some big miles:

I really wanted this big R1100GS, and it turns out I still do:

This had me scanning Craigslist on my phone from our hotel room at 5:00 the next morning:

These early 80s Katanas just get cooler:

I had a VFR800, but never the baby VF500F:

They had cars, too, though I was mostly done taking pictures by this point. But here's Henry showing how low this Lotus race car is:

Sam was willing to stand on the glass floor, Henry was not:

After going through the five floors of the museum, we went outside to look at the race track that is next to the museum. Once again, Sam would walk across the glass floor tiles, but Henry would not:

Henry was REALLY freaked out by this big plastic snake. Even after I showed him it was fake, he still gave it a wide berth. Sam was willing to check it out:

After finishing up at the museum, we turned around and headed back north. Through a few hours of rain and traffic, we ended up back in Bowling Green for the night. Sam was dying for a steak dinner, so we went to an Outback. The boys played a game of Giant Jenga while we waited:

And then it was time to dig in to our celebratory dinner:

(Henry actually liked it, he's just mugging for the camera)

Three days, 1300 miles, 2.5 audio books, and a lot of gas station junk food. That makes for a pretty good trip with my boys.