Wednesday March 25 - Paducah KY to Lexington KY with hike in Mammoth Cave NP - 5 miles hike

Today was a very pleasant day. The weather improved from 'almost raining' all day to quite sunny and as the day went on, pleasingly warm.  We drove I-24, I-69 (formerly Western KY Parkway) and a good chunk of the Western KY Parkway that is NOT now part of I-69 before the hike and then KY-84 and US-68 (both very scenic) most of the rest of the way to Lexington.

The hike started off very wet and muddy for maybe .75 of the first 1.5 miles.  After that it got less mucky and more enjoyable as it worked its way down to a river and a single hike-in camp site at the end of the White Oaks trail.  Surprisingly for the location and conditions, we saw two separate other hikers on this trail.  We were wondering why the person who plotted this trail on Alltrails only went ~2.6 miles each way etc but when we got to the campsite and the trail went no further, it made sense.



Tonight's hotel takes advantage of Covid-19 savings by putting us in a Hyatt Regency in Lexington for about the same as a Best Western would have been during normal times.  Our room has a lovely view of Triangle Park outside our 12th floor window.  We walked around the park and some more of downtown since it was our first time doing anything in Lexington except speeding through and as I hoped when we zipped through before, it's a very pleasant city.  So much less sketchy feeling than Memphis or, increasingly, Nashville. Dinner was take-out from Chilis which probably sounds pedestrian but compared to a string of drive-thru options, was quite nice.

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