After a giant southern meal the night before, we couldn't help but sleep in a little bit.

We packed the car full of our crap, checked out, and drove across the street to Cracker Barrel.

I remember going to Cracker Barrels all the time on family road trips in upstate New York and Vermont, and this trip has made me realize how long it's been. Turns out Louie never ate at one before. We both officially had an excuse.

We got your usual pile of breakfast food for a reasonable price.

After eating, we planned to get in the car and head to Mammoth cave in Kentucky. However, right before we did, we realized that we had to discuss the route for the next coming days. Where and when we planned on getting to our destinations and what have you.

Louie and I totally underestimated the size of the middle of the country... We had talked about making it to Denver by November 2nd to catch his friends concert, but we were quickly realizing that we were cutting it pretty close. It would mean missing a lot of what we had planned on seeing in the midwest. We went back and forth about how exactly we would make this work. 15 hour long drive here, 13 hour long drive there... After deliberating for about an hour, we concluded that we would have to miss the show in Denver. We would get there when we get there.

The next leg of our trip, from Nashville to Mammoth Cave National Park, would only be an hour and a half drive. After that we would have another 5 hours until getting to Chicago, presumably late at night.

We drove to the Walmart closest to Mammoth Cave, only about 30 minutes away, and made our camp for the night. I made a point of stopping by the Walmart auto shop about my car trouble. The Walmart mechanic wasn't helpful. He was an old toothless man about 5'5", with long grey hair forming a halo around the shiny bald center and an equally long beard. He was in the shop at a table and there was a barrier so that I couldn't wander in. I asked for help and he didn't respond. I figured he didn't hear me so I called again. He turns to see me standing in the parking lot and starts walking over. I can hear him say "What the fuck does this guy want..."

Once he's within 5 feet of me he asks "What do you need?"

I say "Hey there, the check engine light–"

"Nope sorry, we don't do that here." he butts in. And he turns around.

Toothless bastard.

I went to an Autozone just across the street and Dylan, the man who helped me, was excellent. He sold me a gas cap for $11 and gave me some words of encouragement so that I wouldn't fret about the light. Since the warning light had turned off and the gas cap was replaced, I should be fine for the rest of the way...

Louie and I bought a 2 foot piece of french bread, a pound of turkey, spinach, and gouda cheese from Walmart for less than 10 bucks and went back to the car. Louie constructed each of us a foot long hero and topped it off with the BBQ sauce we bought from Jacks the night before.

After eating we skated around the shopping center parking lots for a while. There were a lot of homeless people there. Some seemed young, maybe my age or just a little older. Others were adults in the 40s and up. Walmart's appear to serve as community centers in more remote areas of the country. People hang out and talk to one another constantly. The employees seem to have rapport with their local clientele, exchanging hello's and friendly banter, just as they do every day.

A homeless guy approached us and asked us if we'd give him a dollar if he could do a kickflip. We told him we would give him the dollar anyway but he insisted on attempting the trick. He couldn't do it. He was a nice guy. We gave him the dollar and parted ways.

We were skating for at least an hour until I finally ate shit. Louie and I don't really do tricks, but we are pretty quick and nimble on these boards. We were whipping around parked cars like the lot was an obstacle course. It was one sneaky pot hole in the shadow of a parked pick up that would do me in. As I was about to change the song I had playing through my phone, I hit the pothole, stopped short, and flew forward. I landed on my hands and hip and slid for a few feet, grinding the bottom of my phone between the pavement and my palm.

Dang.

I immediately look at my BRAND NEW iPhone and notice the damage. It looks like it took a bullet for me, right on the bottom of the back side. Well it works fine, and you cant really notice it with the case on, and most importantly the camera wasn't destroyed.

After assessing the damage of my phone, I remembered that I too was damaged in the accident. My knee and hip were a bit sore, but not bleeding. My right wrist felt sprained and my pinky was cut up pretty badly. The most painful of all was my palm, which was still recovering from a pretty bad spider bite I had gotten in the summer. The impact happened directly on the scar tissue in my palm and boy did that hurt like hell. It's still a little sore.

In the end I walked away from it. Didn't land on my face and do any serious damage so I was thankful. My phone still worked so that was a relief. We returned to the car, face timed with our buddy Chris Ortiz in NY, and called it a night.

I woke up around 7 or 8 am. The sun was just starting to shine through the foggy windows of the civic. It was a little cold but it wasn't terrible. Louie and I sat in the car as the heat was starting to blast through the vents. Our bodies slowly coming back to life. For breakfast I had a little personal pecan pie that i hid in the compartment of the drivers side door. I ate that and was happy. We went into a Target in hopes of finding an area where I could charge my laptop and write, but they didn't have outlets for us.

The only other option would be Barnes & Noble but they weren't open until 10. Well we passed the time and eventually went there. I typed and edited the smoky mountain video for about an hour and then we left. Next stop, McDonalds to punish our bodies. I had a McDouble and Louie had a McDouble and a McChicken which he put inside the McDouble. He had a name for the creation but some readers might find it inappropriate. Moving on.

We were on our way to Mammoth Cave. When were officially in the park the GPS said we would need to park somewhere and walk the rest of the way to the visitors center. We didn't know exactly what it meant but we found an overlook nearby and parked. We didn't see any signs but we did see a bridge that led into the woods. Maybe that was the way?

We took the trail into the park woods and walked for about a mile before reaching a dead end. The end was a graveyard commemorating the Sloan and Furlong families, the people who "founded" the land that Mammoth Cave exists under back in the 1800's. The graveyard was spooky, but cool. We still didn't know where this park entrance was. I looked through the trees and thought I could see a building in the distance. I asked Louie if he could see what I saw and he agreed. We decided to make our own path directly to the distant building that we assumed to be the visitors center. We walked into the woods for about 10 minutes until we realized we didn't see a building, but were instead fooled by an illusion created by the light and the trees in the distance. We were starting to look a little lost.

We turned around and made it back to the path. We walked back to the main road and ended up wandering quite a ways before looping back around to my car. Where the hell was the entrance to the park?

Our tourguide, Aaron Quicksall. Best ever.

We started driving again and eventually found the visitors center. It was all very confusing for some reason.

We went inside and hopped on the soonest cave tour we could, which left in about 4 minutes. We ran down to the meeting place and sat with our group. Our tourguide, Aaron Quicksall, was a very funny and enthusiastic young man about my age who is from Illinois and works seasonally at the park. He gave us a required breakdown of cave tour rules and regulations, and then led us down to the "historical entrance".

The cave was made a national park on July 1, 1941. Mammoth cave has been observed to be 412 miles long, making it the longest cave system known in the world, twice as long as its closest competitor. It was unified with the Flint Ridge cave system in 1972, extending this claim.

The tour was incredible. Aaron is the funniest tourguide I've ever had. He told us some punny cave jokes, exhibited a vast understanding of the caves history, and really immersed us in some cave lore that was nothing short of theatre. From cavers who wandered away from their groups and got lost in the darkness forever to the ancient mummies found in the cave from 3,000 years ago. The longest a person has ever been lost in the cave and found alive was 39 hours. Can you imagine?

Cave Pun #4382: "The stalactites in the cave are referred to as Marshmallow stalactites. Scientist observe them as growing an inch every 300 years. However, they believe that with some chocolate and graham crackers, the marshmallow stalactites could grow a little s'more."

We learned that, unfortunately, there is a disease that is quickly wiping out Bat populations in the US. It is referred to as White Nose Syndrome.

White Nose Syndrome, which is common but not fatal to European bat populations, has managed to wipe out 95% of all North American bats east of the Mississippi River. The disease effects bats in the US due to their inability to recover in the same way that their Eurpoean cousins can.

Experts believe the disease was spread by cavers who wore contaminated equipment in a North American cave after being previously exposed across the pond.

During the tour, Aaron attributed the outcome of the American Revolution to the discovery of gunpowder in Mammoth Cave. Aaron joked, "Without Mammoth Cave, we'd all be driving on the wrong side of the road." In response to Aaron, with impeccable comedic timing, a man with an impossibly think southern drawl uttered, "Yeah, and we ain't speakin' with them silly accents neither!"

Louie and I did our best to contain our laughter.

After exploring the worlds longest cave we returned to the surface and started the car for Chicago. We were so hungry after the tour but the only thing we had to eat at the time was the bag of raw spinach. Handfuls of spinach for dinner.

I drove us for about 3 hours until it was pitch black on I-65. The landscape was surreal in a blade runner way. The only thing you could see in the sky were dozens of red lights blinking in synch with one another. Slowly flashing on an off as I drove on the 80 mph highway. The lights turned out to be glowing bases of windmills, churning the frigid atmosphere above us.

Then suddenly, WHOOSH! A dear flies in front of my car! Just barely missing the hood of the civic it disappears into the field adjacent to the interstate. Wow that was scary. I think that's all the excitement I want for one day.

We were somewhere in Indiana when I decided to find a spot to sleep. We could continue for Chicago in the morning. The Walmart we went to was very out of the way. I really couldn't tell what our surroundings looked like it was so dark.

I finished editing the smoky mountain footage in the car and then we fell asleep. Next stop, Chicago. Well at least we thought...