Dinosaur World: Cave City, KY

After spending the night in a Wigwam, eating breakfast at a restaurant that still has a smoking section (it was full) and before we explored abandoned Funtown Mountain, there was Dinosaur World. There are three different Dinosaur Worlds, one in Florida, Texas and Kentucky. Cave City, Kentucky is located near Mammoth Cave Park and was obviously once a booming tourist town. There are still motels, gift shops and other attractions, but the whole town feels largely stuck in time.

Unlike Funtown Mountain across the street, Dinosaur World seems to be doing quite well—they're even open every single day except Christmas and Thanksgiving from 8:30am - 6pm. Dinosaur World features more than 150 life-sized dinosaurs set along an outdoor, wooded path. I read a review where someone complained that they weren't animatronic, but it was the low-tech nature of it all that appealed to me most.

I wouldn't consider myself to have an extensive knowledge of all things dinosaur-related, but I was blown away by how many different kinds of dinosaurs have been discovered. It's one thing to read about their different traits and sizes, but it's another thing entirely to see them up close and in person. Dinosaur World also has a "Mammoth Garden," and if there's one extinct species that we should try to resurrect, it should be the Wooly Mammoth.

Some of the dinosaurs looked predictably scary, but others looked so silly that they made me laugh. Nature is such a weird and wonderful thing, and it wasn't hard to draw connections between dinosaurs and modern-day creatures like birds and lizards. We'll probably never know what it's like to share the earth with dinosaurs like the ones we imagine, but a day at Dinosaur World was more than sufficient to quell that urge. And if all of the Jurassic Park movies are to be believed, resurrecting actual dinosaurs is most likely a terrible idea.

Barrel of Fun

We had already planned to eat ice cream from an ice cream cone-shaped ice cream stand, but when I came across the Barrel of Fun in my roadtrip research, I couldn't resist adding it to our itinerary. We did visit them on separate days, but even if we hadn't, you can never have too much novelty architecture (or ice cream) in your life, in my opinion.

The Barrel of Fun is located in Okolona, a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky, in a residential neighborhood, next to a tiny strip of shops. The 12-foot-tall red, and white-striped barrel opened in 1994 by former plant worker Mark Beam and originally only sold ice cream. They've since expanded to included other standard roadside fare such as burgers and hot dogs.

By the time we arrived at the Barrel, we were ready for dinner, so I got a chili cheese dog (my first!) and a large dill pickle (my mouth waters at the memory). New York maybe clouding my judgement, but everything on the menu was insanely cheap (I can't remember exactly, but the chili dog was under $2). Is the Barrel of Fun something everyone should drive miles out of their way to see? Probably not. But it was a delightful, somewhat hidden, local gem, with average food that tasted slightly above average only because it was served to us from the inside of a 12-foot barrel.

Eastern Cemetery: Abandoned

On our way to Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, KY to visit the final resting place of Colonel Sanders (naturally), we missed the entrance and had to turn around. JMP pulled into what looked like another entrance to the cemetery, but it turns out it was for a different cemetery, one adjacent to, and separate from Cave Hill.

Eastern Cemetery opened in the 1840s, making it one of Louisville's oldest cemeteries. While we were exploring, we were approached by a man that had been cutting the grass. We immediately thought that we were in trouble, but we couldn't have been more wrong. He had noticed our out-of-state license plate, and just wanted to share some information about the cemetery with us. His story was incredible, and made our visit so much better than it would have been otherwise.

The sordid story of Eastern Cemetery goes something like this: in 1989, a disgruntled employee came forward with information that the cemetery had been reselling old graves, perhaps starting as early as 1858. Cemetery officials would keep track of which graves were frequently visited by family and friends, and ones with no visitors would be marked "OG" in the records, for "old grave." OG's would subsequently be resold, and according to a New York Times article about the scandal, "the remains of up to 48,000 people were buried in graves that were already occupied."

Whoever owns the cemetery assumes liability and by law must make efforts to reinter all of the mistreated remains—an astronomically expensive and exhaustive task—so the cemetery has sat abandoned since the 80s. In 2013 a volunteer group was started to help clean up the cemetery, and their efforts are very obvious—in fact, most of the cemetery no longer looks abandoned. Our de facto tour guide said that when his group started, the grass was more than 7 feet tall around the headstones.

Speaking of the headstones, what did the cemetery do with the old stone when they resold the plot? Our guide said that was a mystery until recently, when a stone expert pointed to a particular grave with an unusually carved headstone. Not only was the cemetery reselling graves, but they were shaving names off of headstones and reselling them as well (!!). As if that wasn't crazy enough, Krug's stone was re-carved twice. After we saw once instance of this, I became obsessed with finding others. I think we found a few that were suspicious, including a lot of plain granite stones with plaques attached, which seems like a great way to easily change a stone.

The story of Eastern Cemetery is so crazy to me, but I can't help but wonder if its residents aren't the only ones to have suffered such indignities—the cemetery business model is not a very sustainable one, and who knows how long they would have gotten away with it if someone hadn't blown the whistle. If i lived nearby, I would love to volunteer to help maintain the grounds. I'm grateful, however, that the residents of Eastern Cemetery seem to be finally getting the care they deserve, and especially thankful for the volunteer who stopped to share his incredible story with us.

Funtown Mountain: Abandoned

On our way out of Cave City, Kentucky (after a blissful night spent sleeping in a Wigwam) we couldn't resist stopping to check out Funtown Mountain. Originally opened in 1969 as Guntown Mountain (you can see where the G was amended to an F recently), the attraction included a gift shop, haunted hotel and chair lift ride up the titular mountain.

It was reopened as Funtown Mountain in June of 2015, but closed in September of that year when the owner ran into financial trouble and missed some loan payments. Cave City officials declared the park a public safety hazard, and the property went up for auction in April of this year. It sold for $295,000 to a Cave City local who plans to turn it into a destination, a project estimated to cost anywhere from five to twenty million dollars.

We creeped around for a while before I thought I was actually going to die from the heat and insanely bright sun. We climbed up a flight of very rickety wooden steps and discovered an overgrown snack bar car, restrooms, a creepy white-washed bus and what looked like the remnants of some sort of bumper ride. We were sure there was more to the park, but we were running low on time (and cooling mechanisms) and didn't want to push our luck.

The Haunted Hotel and adjacent fortune-telling hut were definitely a highlight. Although we couldn't find a viable way into the "hotel," it was still such an A+ find. Parts of Funtown Mountain feel as if they've been abandoned for years—instead of months—but I can still see why someone with big dreams would be able to see its potential. I'd love to revisit Funtown if it ever reopens, but they might find it difficult to improve on the creepiness of a legitimately abandoned Haunted Hotel.

Wigwam Village No. 2

I can't remember when I first became aware of the Wigwam Villages, but ever since I did, I've been obsessed with staying in one (and then, of course, the other two). It seemed sensible to begin with the one "closest" to me—Wigwam Village No. 2, in Cave City, Kentucky. In fact, our entire recent ALL CAPS EPIC ROAD TRIP OF DELIGHTS was planned around an overnight stay at the Wigwam Village. Everything else we did along the way there and back was really just a bonus as long as we got to SLEEP IN A WIGWAM, I was happy.

The first Wigwam Village was built in 1933 by Frank A. Redford, in Horse Cave, KY. When No. 2 opened a few miles away in 1937, No. 1 closed and was demolished in 1982. No. 2 has 15 wigwams arranged in a semi-circle (technically tipis, but I don't think Frank was too concerned about cultural sensitivity at the time). Subsequent villages were built in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Arizona and California, and only the last two still remain.

Each wigwam has one or two beds, a bathroom (small, but normal by New York standards), a TV, window AC, vanity and chair. Outside there is space to park one car and a bench for each Wigwam. The hickory furniture is original to the rooms, and I immediately fell in love with the zigzag detail repeated throughout the bathroom. Each concrete and steel Wigwam is 14 ft in diameter, so it's not a luxury suite, but it was clean, the shower pressure was great, and it was everything I had expected from an 80-year-old roadside novelty motel (and only $84 for a double room on the weekend).

The village also includes a large central wigwam, which originally housed a restaurant, but now serves as a gift shop and office. We were lucky to chat with the lovely owner while we browsed the gift shop, but he had some disheartening things to say about bad reviews that have hurt his (already precarious) business. He explained that the wigwams are basically one step up from camping, and that it was impossible to combat the unrealistic expectations people have for the 80-year-old motel.

It was sad to hear that some guests aren't as thrilled as we were to stay in what I consider to be a true American treasure—one that's been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1988. I can only hope that there are enough novelty architecture-, roadside attraction- loving people left in the world for the three remaining Wigwam Villages to survive.