Cave Run Lake - Daniel Boone National Forest...September 13 - Day 18

(Kim's Perspective)
We were positively exhausted when we woke around 7:00 this morning, but because it was a Wal-Mart parking lot, sleeping in wasn't exactly an option.  We tossed on our clothes, did the packing up routine and jumped in the truck.  I jumped back out to commemorate our lovely camping experience with a photo...

....and then we drove across the street to the gas station to fill up and put air in the tires.  After all those gas fill-ups yesterday, our credit card company finally caught up and recognized "unusual activity", so I had to place a quick call to authorize our continued transactions.  For the record, we're 18 days into a vacation using this card exclusively and they're just NOW getting around to recognizing unusual activity?  Seriously? 

We drove along and neither one of us spoke, nor did we turn on the radio.  We were both in a somewhat functioning comatose state and neither one of us wanted to be driving.  We drove through the rest of Indiana and then crossed into Kentucky.  We were both so tired, we decided it was stupid to push through and get home - it's only Saturday after all - so I did a little mapping and found a nice state park for us to chill out for the day.  We arrived around 11am and spent some time looking for a nice camping spot.  We found a great site in loop C ("C" for Cardinal) and were the only ones in the entire loop.  Huh?  It's Saturday.  Where is everyone?  Who cares!  We have the whole place to ourselves.  We set up...

 ...and then turned on the water heater, ate lunch, took showers, and then took a nice long nap.  We woke up around 3 and then went for a walk around the campground.  While we were walking, we spotted a bald eagle circling above us.  I thought it was kind of odd that I hadn't spotted any eagles at all and when I finally did see one, it was in Kentucky of all places.

There was a hiking trail off of the end of the campground loop, so we headed into the woods and were surprised by how nice it was.

Umm....that's cool.

Every so often, the trail would get close to the lake and the trees would open up a bit to give us a nice view...

 

 We walked on for a bit and stumbled across some interesting mushrooms and trees...

 

 ...and took time for a shadow picture.

We realized the trail only paralleled the lake and didn't actually take us to it, so we turned around after a couple of miles and headed back.  We went off trail and pushed our way through the weeds and brush to get to the lake.

The views by the water were quite nice...

 We walked back through the woods and picked up the trail again...

...(and apparently picked up a bunch of chiggers along the way) and returned to the campsite to chill.  Bill read his Kindle while I supervised an Adventure Kitteh outing...

and took a few more photos of the campsite and surrounding area...

We realized we were losing daylight, so we went for a drive to see the other areas of the park.  We stopped at the beach area for a bit...

and enjoyed the sunset...

 

The temp was dropping quickly and it was somewhat breezy, so we walked back to the truck...

...and drove around the rest of the campground loops making note of the especially nice sites.  After all, Kentucky is close enough that we could visit again for a long weekend.  :)  As we drove back, Bill spotted this flower growing alongside the road and pointed it out.  It reminded me of a Rose of Sharon (though the rest of the plant just looked like a big weed).

It quickly grew dark, so we went back to the camper and I dumped photos onto the laptop and worked on drafting the blog while Bill read.  Considering we started out the day as a bunch of miserable pups, it ended on a really great note.  And, best of all, we're not home yet.  :-D