Sunday, July 30-August 5, 2017 - Fort Knox, KY - Camp Carlson Campground

Sunday-Saturday, July 30-August 5, 2017 - Fort Knox, KY - Camp Carlson Campground

Saturday afternoon we visited with the staff at our campground in Paducah about extending our stay a couple of hours since our drive to Fort Knox is only about 4 hours, and Matt and family will not arrive until 6:00 p.m. or so.  This will allow us to time our arrival as close to theirs as possible.  The campground was great and said no problem to stay until 1:00 - it will take us approximately 4 hours to reach our next destination.  The drive went well for us and we could see we would be ahead of our son and his family by at least an hour and a half, as they ending up making a few extra stops along the way.  Not unusual when you have toddlers.  We decided to eat dinner at O'Charley's in Elizabethtown, KY - about a 25 minute drive from Fort Knox, which worked out perfectly and we arrived at the campground about 10 minutes before Matt, Megan and family pulled in.  When we went to check in at the office, it was closed.  A sign said to check in by 9 the next morning, so since we knew our site location we moved on over and were soon set up.  A little later a camp host showed up at our site.  We looked around to see if there might be someone we should visit with but se did not see the cone in front of his motorhome at the angle it was setting in our sightline to the office area.  He was really nice about it though and he got us on his list!  The kids stayed and visited with us for about two hours before heading to their hotel room on base.  Megan has training for the next 5 days so Matt and the grandkids will hang out with us during the day, and we'll have meals either here at Bentley or find a place to eat in the area.

We enjoyed a lot of playground time here in the campground with Josh and Sarah throughout the week, and a visit to a larger playground on base one day.  

Pictures from the playground at Camp Carlson.

On our way to the playground at Fort Knox.

Having fun at the playground on Fort Knox.

Of course we had to check out the US Mint at Fort Knox.  This is the closest we could get to it.

Evenings I cooked dinner except for one evening when we decided to try a local Chinese restaurant.  I suggested it after reading about it online and wow, what a disappointment it was to all of us. I can't believe it had such rave reviews.  

There was little to no Verizon signal at Camp Carlson - except at the playground.  It was very frustrating for me as I was unable to work on the blog at all during this time and so needless to say I am way behind.  

In an attempt to find something we could do during the day with the grandkids while Megan was in class, we decided to visit Henry's Ark near Louisville.  Despite the horrible traffic we had to endure this was probably the biggest hit with Josh of all the things we did during our time with them.  It was a simple little zoo with cows, bulls, bison, chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, turkeys, swans, etc.  He just had a blast and that's what he talked about most.  It really doesn't take that much to make kids happy and we sometimes fail to understand they don't need high dollar entertainment.  There was no fee - they just asked that we leave a donation to help defray the costs of feeding the animals.  What fun!  The second best outcome of this trip - we determined we would definitely bypass Louisville at all costs when we move north to Ohio.  The traffic in this area was horrible.

Pictures taken at Henry's Ark

We stayed over two more days at the campground after Megan's training, and Matt and Megan moved to a cabin here in the campground from their hotel room on base.  This was great because it was much larger in size than the limited room in Bentley.  After the kids went to sleep we had room for the adults to play cards both evenings as it included a full size table and 4 chairs, and we really enjoyed that.  Saturday morning we ate breakfast at Bub's Cafe in Elizabethtown. What a treat!  The food was really great and it helped make up for the bad experience we had at the Chinese restaurant earlier in the week.  One evening we had a wiener roast using the fire pit outside their cabin.