Mammoth Caves

The following day, we left the Cincinnati area and headed south toward Nashville.  Our destination was Mammoth Caves National Park and we had a timed tour that we had pre-paid for.  It looked like it was going to be close for the check-in time and possibly a little late, which would be bad.  About 15 minutes to go for our tour time, we crossed over into Central Time Zone, thus gaining an hour back!  We would be on time and even early now.  The four hour walking tour came with numerous warnings that you should not go if you may have health problems with strenuous walking.  There were a few people in our party who apparently were NOT listening because there was almost a medical emergency on our tour.  Fortunately, everyone made it out alive.  The vast scale of the tunnels and large open areas underground were amazing.  The displays talking about how it would've taken millions of years to form these caves, but we knew that God formed them with the recession of the flood waters which was a rapid event over weeks to years which could produce the same effect.  If you don't believe in God, you can't believe in the flood, and then you can't see what is right before your very eyes.  Bryce had many suggestions on the tour for how to make it better.  Really, he just wanted to take home a keepsake from the cave, like some gypsum off the walls of cave.  When we were all done, we played some whiffle ball and then headed to our hotel just a little north of Nashville.  The next morning we attended church at West End Community Church which is one of Phil Darke's partner churches.  God spoke through the pastor directly to us with a Babe Ruth baseball analogy!  

Phil helped us pick our church to attend.

Dimly lit and about 20 degrees cooler than outside, but beautiful.

Walking the four hour trek to see much.

Stalagmites and stalactites (from above).

Looking back on where we had just come.

Looking down into one of the deep cavities.

Like a giant monster's mouth, can you imagine?

Ice cream cone reward for hiking for four hours.

Shoe cleansing to stop white nose disease in bats.

Close up of gypsum growing on the ceilings.

Bryce really wanted to take some gypsum home.

Reds v Cubs in Cincinnati

When Brett is given freedom to plan a vacation around a few parameters, he can usually find a way to weave baseball into it.  So since the Reds were home and we were going to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter all within an hour of Cincinnati, it was a no brainer.  Then there is the fact that there is a new stadium since Brett was last in town, Great American Ballpark.  To top it off, it was a fireworks night and the Cubs were in town with old friend, former Athletic, Sonny Gray pitching for the Reds.

Pete Rose head first dive statue.

Garrett with the Tony Perez statue.

Fireworks night at Great American Ballpark.

The shadows creep across the field in the Reds win.

Reds win.  Dad's fantasy pitcher beats Garrett's.

Keeping score, as usual, at another ballpark.

Griffin tries out to be a Reds mascot.

Memories of Buster Posey's grand slam in the NLDS of 2014...

Sonny Gray struck out 5 of the first 6 batters.

Sunset at the ballpark...and the lights begin to take effect.

Another Reds mascot visits with Griffin.

Family photo opportunity looking out from the ballpark.

Pre-game, field level view, before going up to get our all-you-can-eat hot dogs, peanuts, popcorn, and sodas.

Griffin takes some swings.

Outside the stadium, oh no, Puig is a Red!

Joe Morgan statue, a great second baseman.

We didn't go inside, but we saw it...Bengals stadium.

The Ark Encounter

We selected to go to the Ark Encounter on day two of our stay because it was supposed to be the easier one to see in 3/4 of a day.  The size of the ark was quite impressive as were all the explanations and demonstrations of how Noah could have used the technology of the time to feed, clean, keep fresh air and water for all of the kinds of animals on board.  That was the other fascinating thing was the explanation of the genetics built into dog kind, that we have had a huge explosion of more dog species with breeding used to accentuate different characteristics, pointing even more to all of dog kind coming from a pair on the ark.  We enjoyed some of the talks and the animal exhibits too.

Petting zoo time.

Panning for fossils with Zach and Faith.

Getting an idea of the magnitude of the Ark.

Not often you get to see a kangaroo jump around.

Mechanical engineering to get light on plants being grown.

The giant door to open the ark.

Layers of ice formed rapidly after this WWII bomber crashed.

How true is this?

Bryce with a representative of cat kind.

If dinosaurs are 65 million years old, why is soft tissue in this fossil?

Just melanin shades, we are all one.

Do you recognize any of these animals?

Ark length and shape, built to survive large waves.

Looking up into the many levels of the ark.

Flood waters bury the most simple organisms at the bottom of the shallow waters first

Creation Museum

The Creation Museum was an amazing journey including movies, exhibits, and speakers.  We enjoyed our entire day there and probably could have stayed longer.  The most wonderful thing was to see things portrayed historically through a Yahwistic lense with scientific evidence to back it up and show the Bible to be both historically accurate, but actually more accurate given the facts than modern day science tries to explain things that don't match up with what we can and have observed.  Then you apply this view to other natural phenomenon and they don't seem so unbelievable as the world would have you believe.  It just makes sense.

Joy catches up on some work emails while the boys get ready.

Griffin on a juvenile triceratops.

The Grand Canyon formed during the flood, makes a lot more sense.

A zorse and a zonkey, cross-breeds of horse kind.

There was no shortage of dinosaurs at the Creation Museum.  There is fossil evidence for these creatures and likely correlate with mentions of monsters and leviathan in the Bible.

Feeding the animals...

Mt. St. Helens is a great example of catastrophism.

The Tower of Babel describes how people were dispersed.