Murthy's Blog

After a hectic trip to New York, Niagara and Washington DC, we needed complete rest for a couple of days. We took it easy and lazed around in Blacksburg, and enjoyed the University area. We had wonderful morning/evening walks and visits to the shopping malls.

We left Blacksburg for Campbellsville around midday on 22 May’05. The drive through West Virginia State enroute to Campbellsville was once again very picturesque through mountains, valleys and thick jungles. It was a great drive. We halted at a rest area where sugar free yoghurt based ice- cream was being sold. It was heavenly. The maintenance work on the road being executed by engineers of the highway reminded me of my own work as Chief Engineer in Sikkim ten years back. The quality of work and planning, of these highway engineers, is of superior quality. After 3 hours of hill driving, the terrain configuration changed to plain country. There was absolutely no pollution on the road. At yet another rest area, an American greeted us with an enthusiastic "Namaste". He introduced himself and mentioned that he was in Nepal for 8 years. We had by now reached the horse capital of the world - Lexington in Kentucky. One could see miles and miles of green pastures and meadows, neatly trimmed &manicured, where horses and cattle were lazily grazing. It was indeed a great countryside.

We reached Campbellsville (Kentucky) around 8:00 PM. We had a quick bite and slept off early. My morning walk the next day (23^rd May’05) was a feast for the eyes. This place is also very clean and green.

The next day we drove to Fort Knox - a US Army town, where the US Armored Corps and Mechanized Infantry training center is located. It is a high-security area. Alongside this place is the famous Patton museum (General George S. Patton was a military leader of World War - 2 fame). I had always been fascinated by his leadership qualities. It was a treat to go through the museum. I was particularly happy to be here since I had been associated with tanks during my Army days. It was a great visit indeed. The American bullion reserves are kept at Fort Knox – a high security area. Later we drove to a place called Louisville, where we had a good Indian buffet lunch.

In the evening we went to the self-service car-cleaning place. I enjoyed cleaning the car with all the automatic facilities available.

During the walk next morning, I was quite disappointed to see garbage strewn all over on the shoulder of a part of an interested highway. It is surprising how a country, which boasts of environmental cleanliness, could tolerate such vandalism on the highway.

Next morning we drove on yet another interesting highway to the world-famous Mammoth Caves. The drive to the caves reminded me of my tenure in Siliguri. The Mammoth Caves are the world's largest caves, 368 miles in length. We went on a conducted tour to a part of the cave system, climbing down 300 steps (around 250 feet below ground). The caves contain many stalactites and stalagmites. Overall, it was an awesome tour of a unique place in the world. This cave system perhaps was one of the underground distributaries of the Green river thousands of years ago and the system seems to have gone through a lot of geological changes over the past many years.

# posted by Murthy @ 3:10 PM