So, now you know how the kids faired in Kentucky. What about my dear husband?

While Nick and Val were in Mammoth Cave for two hours, we decided to take a boat tour of the Green River. It was so beastly hot that day. We thought that maybe riding down the river there would be at least a cool breeze, some air movement. No such luck. Add to that that there was a toddler on board who only quit screaming long enough to listen to his mom scream back at him, and well, it was just a whole lot of fun. Gotta have those memories.

After the night in the Wigwam Village, we headed into the Daniel Boone National Forest. Our first stop was Mill Springs Mill. It was historic and picturesque and all that touristy stuff, but what got us was the puppy.

A man who appeared to work there held in his lap a young hound, its skin too big for its bony body. “Someone just dropped him off by the side of the road.” He rubbed the soft brown ears. “How can anyone do that to such a sweet thing? You know anyone who would take him?”

“Well, we’re just here on vacation. We’re from Wisconsin,” I rationalized, while Himey gave me the ‘look’.

“He’d make somebody a great dog.”

Himey continued to give me the look. “Boy, we gotta get going.” I nudged the family to the car.

Even though Shadow, our neurotic black cocker, was waiting for us at home, this little mutt came mighty close to getting in that car with us. It crossed our minds that it would cut our trip short but we still almost made the sacrifice. Then we came to our senses and left the little fella behind.

Yahoo Falls was physically more painful. A beautiful falls and reportedly the tallest in Kentucky, it is at the bottom of a quarter mile trail, straight down. The hike down was bad enough, crawling back up the path in the 90 plus heat with dripping humidity was tortuous. Even dangerous, as sweat ran off of us with more force than the water over the Falls.

We made it though, and each chugged a bottle-full of water before we got to the next stop, Cumberland Falls. While Yahoo Falls may claim to be the tallest, Cumberland takes the largest category. Himey especially liked this place because the trail to the falls rated a much lower sweat-factor. Also, some little old lady befriended him and they walked back to the parking lot together, possibly hand-in-hand or at least hand-on-arm.

Himey, though, was due for his misfortunes too. As mentioned in an earlier blog, his family came to Wisconsin from Kentucky, Breathitt County to be exact. We stopped one day at Jackson, the county seat, to see if we could find any family history for him.

After driving around town for a bit, we found the Breathitt County Museum. It was closed because the woman who runs it had a stroke. I am an absolutely awful person because for some reason I thought that was humorous.

I picture her being 90-years-old, half-blind, deaf and tottering around the museum with her walker. The poor little thing. Couldn’t some high school student from town help her out over the summer and do all the work so she doesn’t have to stroke-out with all the records she has to archive, all the tourists from out-of-town tracking down long-dead relatives?

Needless to say, we didn’t find anything out about the history of my husband’s clan.