Image edited from mapquest

The second day of our Louisville & Nashville trip was a very long and busy one due to a good amount of driving. Driving from Louisville to Nashville directly would take around 2 hours and 45 minutes but we decided to break up the drive with a stop at Mammoth Cave National Park. This added a little under an hour onto our drive with traffic.

Regardless of the time we spent on the road, we ended up having a pretty productive day. We got to visit some interesting sites, Lucas had a lot of fun playing in a museum and we got stuck waiting (for what seemed like) forever for a famous chicken dish created in Nashville.

Here is a recap of some of the things we did.

Day 2: Louisville to Nashville

• Visited Colonel Sander’s grave
• Toured the world’s longest cave- Mammoth Cave
• Checked out the Frist Center for the Visual Arts
• Dinner at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack

A visit to Kentucky would not be complete without some sort of Kentucky Fried Chicken related stop. On day 1 of the trip, we got to visit Col. Sanders at the Louisville Visitors Center. We planned to pay our respects to the Colonel on Day 1 but when we showed up at the Cave Hill Cemetery the guard told us he was shutting the gates in 5 minutes. We decided to squeeze in a quick visit, first thing before heading towards Nashville. Cave Hill is a massive cemetery but they were kind enough to paint a yellow line that leads to Col. Sanders’ grave.
I plan to write a post about my visit at some point in the future and tell you how I helped the Colonel out during my visit.

While doing research for our trip, I came across Mammoth Cave National Park– the world’s longest cave system. Located in Kentucky, the park is just about half way between Louisville & Nashville. Lucas does not love long car rides and Kim & I like visiting caves, so a stop here made a lot of sense for us. We arrived just in time to join the Historic Tour. This was considered a moderate difficulty level.

During the tour we had to climb over 400 stairs and duck/ squeeze between some tight spots. Not so simple when carrying a 25 pound baby in front of you (but great training for the Empire State Building Run-Up). The tour offered lots of interesting info about the cave but I didn’t feel like it had many nice things to see in this section. Either way, we were glad that we made the stop and can say that we visited the longest cave system in the world!

After stopping by the Nashville Downtown Visitors Center to chat about the city, we decided to check out the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. The Frist has exhibits changing every couple of months so there is always something new to see. I’m not really a big fan of art museums but Kim enjoyed the exhibits that we checked out. However, I still really enjoyed our visit.

The Frist has one of the most amazing areas that I’ve ever seen in a museum- an interactive area called ArtQuest. It had a variety of stations where you “learn through making art”.  It’s a great area for kids of all ages, and adults too. We spent a while at a huge block table. Lucas had the best time. He had a friendly screaming match with another baby and loved touching the different blocks. I also had fun building some towers for him to knock down! We also made a print (Kim took the lead with that) and I made Lucas a little figure out of little, styrofoam art noodles. Overall, well worth the stop!

Our last stop of the day was for dinner at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack. Hot Chicken is 1 (of 2) of Nashville’s unique kinds of food. According to the tourism board “Hot Chicken is Nashville’s most notable contribution to Southern culinary culture”. I had seen Prince’s featured on Travel Channel’s Man vs Food. After reading more into Hot Chicken, I felt it was a must visit..

We showed up not expecting a wait but the place was packed. We ordered to go and were told the wait would be around 30-40 minutes. It ended up being more like an hour and 20 minutes. While waiting for our chicken, I ended up chatting with some others waiting too. There were other tourists at Prince’s, but most of the line was filled with locals. I figured it must be worth the wait if people show up daily and wait up to two hours! Kim and I were not impressed with the meal. We ordered the mild, which had plenty of spice. While the breading was pretty flavorful and crispy the chicken seemed to be dried out and in our opinion, not worth the wait. However, if we didn’t try it, we wouldn’t know. You can’t always win!

Well that’s it for the day 2 of our mini- trip to the South. This post is just a recap- I plan to write and post more photos about a few of these experiences in the future!

Stay tuned!