the geology club went on a road trip, hitting a bunch of awesome places in only 4 days. Beginning in western New York, we made our way south west, passing through Pennsylvania and then making a pit stop in Ohio. Now...if you like fossils, you'll love this. Caeser Creek State Park is located in Wilmington, Ohio, about halfway between Columbus and Cincinnati. 
Even if you're not that into fossils, but like being outside, this makes a great break during your road trip through Ohio (probably a great final destination for camping too!). Since we are geologists and think fossils are awesome, we spent about an hour and a half stretching our legs and checking out fossils that range from 450-500 million years old. Before you can do that, you need to stop at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Visitor Center and pick up a permit. The permit doesn't cost anything, but there are some rules they like you to follow (e.g. no rock hammers....). 
Even besides scoping out ancient remains, there's so much to do there!After our fun mini adventure we piled back in the car with our juice boxes and tubes of pringles (yes....we're college students after all) and continued on to Kentucky where we stayed the night. The next morning we drove over to the Creation Museum which is located in Petersburg, KY. Despite your personal beliefs, this museum is very well-designed. 
If you like dinosaurs, you'll love this museum. My only serious complaint was that it was a tad pricey. Regular adult admission for 1 day is $21.95. Kids 5-12 are $11.95. If you're active duty Fireman, Policeman, or Military, your admission is FREE! This museum is also relatively new, and a LOT of money went into its development, which might account for the high admission cost. There's definitely a lot to see there and the gift shop is pretty extensive. 
Our visit to the museum didn't take as long as we thought it would, and we were only 20 minutes from Louisville, so we decided to take a drive downtown and visit the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. Whether you're a baseball fan or not, this place is fantastic.So, as said in name, this is both a factory AND museum. Admission is only $10 which includes a free miniature bat souvenir, tour of the factory, and a walk down baseball history lane. In the factory, you can actually watch the bats being made (though there is no bat production on certain days of the year...those days are listed on the website.) There's also a batting cage available and personalized bats can be ordered upon arrival and picked up when you leave, if you want something extra. We didn't spend much time in any one place, but Louisville seemed like an awesome place in general. It sits right on the 
Ohio River, which is also the Indiana-Kentucky border. As an aside about Kentucky, they have the best food. My travels through Kentucky gave me my first Waffle House, which has delicious/enormous breakfast for SO cheap. I'm talking "stuff your face until you're uncomfortably full" for under $10. Also, the south loves their deep fried food, and I will never forget my life-changing experience of deep-fried pickles, which I had for 
the first time in Kentucky. Now, that my stomach is growling.... Okay, so after we finished at the museum, we drove a few hours south to Nashville. The next day, we visited the Grand Ole Opry, which is unfortunately not in the best condition right now with all the flooding. The Grand Ole Opry Museum is a must-see. It's totally free and gives a tour of country music history. I highly recommend Nashville for "places to visit". It's such an exciting city with so much to do. There's night life, history, great food and tons of tourist attractions. There's also a great zoo which was relatively new when we went. Admission was $14 for adults and $9 for kids. Since our time was limited, I did not get to see the Country Music Hall of Fame or about 20 other things I would have loved to see...but at some point I'll be making a trip back to catch what I missed. After our brief day in Nashville, we drove back up to Kentucky, but this time our destination was Cave City. 
Now, despite all the amazing places we went to on this trip, this is was our goal destination. The entirety of our trip was planned around Cave City. Why? Because Mammoth Caves National Park is there. Mammoth Caves is a HUGE (or... Mammoth?) cave system. And if you don't have a problem with small spaces, I highly recommend a tour. There are several tours you can choose from, which last different amounts of time, cover different portions of the cave system, and have different prices. Every tour is very reasonably priced though. We chose the Snowball Tour, which is a bit physically demanding as there are a lot of stairs to climb up and down. While some parts of the cave are tighter, other parts are huge open spaces. That tour was 3 hours and costs $14 for adults and $9 for kids. To me, this was the ideal tour, since it covered a good portion of the cave and we were able to see several formations of gypsum. The reason the tour is called the 
Snowball Tour is because mid tour, you enter into what is called the "Snowball Dining Room" where gypsum covers the cave walls and looks like snowballs. There is also food available for purchase at that point. After our exhausting and exhilarating day of caving, we went out to eat at a local Mexican Restaurant and stayed the night. The next day was primarily devoted to driving since we had a deadline to return. We stayed one extra night in Ohio, and drove the next day back to western NY. We stayed in Best Westerns each night. While it may seem like our trip was all over the place, it actually forms an almost perfectly straight line to Nashville and back. Round trip, it was about 1300 miles, and cost each vehicle about $150 for gas, which isn't bad at all, especially if you split it between everyone!Hotel:: $70/room/night (we stayed 5 nights total)
Gas:$150/car
Attractions: $60/person
Food: $100/person
Of course the total cost depends on how many people are present. We had about 12, so we had to get 3 hotel rooms, and take 3 vehicles. After splitting everything up...
Total cost: ~$300/person
Obviously trips should be customized to the people going, but if you're up for adventure and a mix of science and history, you will LOVE this trip!
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