I got injured at Mammoth Cave National Park

Fun times. What a day at Mammoth Cave. Yeah. This video will be a little bit different than normal and it's definitely not the video that we had planned to make but we wanted to share this experience anyways because in life and living on the road things don't always go according to plan and this experience impacted the rest of our time on the road this year. So to catch you up to speed in our last video we spent three days with our friends Jen and Elliot on their boat in Maryland. After saying goodbye to them we spent a few days driving across Maryland, West Virginia and most of Kentucky where we made it to our 42nd US National Park Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave is the world's longest known cave system with over 400 miles of cave explored and mapped and new discoveries being made often. You may remember that we visited Kentucky last year and went horseback riding, ate some delicious food and visited the Red River Gorge but we had never been to Mammoth Cave so we were really excited to visit and the plan was to spend the day exploring the park including going on a cave tour and to start the day we intended to hike the Green River Bluff, Echo River Springs, Sinkhole and Heritage Trail which is a 4.5 mile loop, but let's just say things did not go according to plan. Similar to Cuyahoga Valley and Acadia, Mammoth Cave is very dog friendly, which is very rare for a national park. Normally dogs aren't allowed on most of the trails so it's pretty awesome that for the last few that we've been to Kona's able to join us for some adventures. We made it to the Green River Overlook which is what we think is the main overlook on this trail and as the name implies it overlooks the Green River and the Green River is actually the driving force behind the creation of the Mammoth Cave. All the streams that run off of this river run underground for miles and that's what creates and carves away the passageways in the cave. But as you can see, there's some low-lying fall going through the valley here and so you can't really see the river but it gives it a little mystical little vibe to it and it's still really beautiful. Well, I think our hike is over. Um, I just, you can see this wooden log behind me and I just completely slipped on it when walking because it's kind of wet. It rained yesterday and just fell and ate it and fell on my wrist and my palm was burning and I turned it over and my palm is like gushing blood. It's not just bleeding. There's blood all over the trail now. So I have a buff on it to try to like put pressure on it so it'll stop bleeding. I don't even know if I can like move my wrist right now. Yeah, it hurts. So I guess we're gonna go back to the van and see what happens. It's crazy that like we were like oh this is gonna be an easy trail and it's just proof that like anything can happen anywhere. Like we've been on so such hard trails and I've never gotten injured and this easier trail I wiped out and hurt myself. So we didn't do the best job filming this experience because it just was not a priority and I was in so much pain but just to show you where on my hand I got injured it was about right here, which is a very important part of your hand that moves very often and this is the hand that's not injured. Still have a band-aid on this hand and one thing we wanted to mention is that we did have a first aid kit on us. We try to always carry the 10 essentials and we recommend that you do the same but it was just not gonna cut it for this situation. There was just way too much blood. The cut was not gonna be healed by a band-aid. So we're looking into a better first aid kit but that's why we used the buff to wrap my hand. A common question among our family and friends is how far was the van from where you fell and thankfully it was only 0.5 miles. So as soon as I could compose myself, we walked back to the van which was at the visitor center. Adam talked to some Rangers and then we headed to the urgent care. So we headed to Best Care Medical Clinic in Cave City and I had to get eight stitches in my hand and it was the most painful thing I've ever experienced and I've had foot surgery before and this was just unbearable. Oh, it was it was awful. I couldn't look at any of it. I had so much, I'll spare a lot of the details, but I had a lot of debris in my wound that they had to like get out and that was not fun. Yeah, it was the worst hour I think I've ever had in my life. I sat there right next to her while they were cleaning it up and doing everything they needed to do and I just got to say this gal is super tough. She was obviously given some f-bombs and stuff, but I would have been crying like a baby. I was crying. Yeah, none of my makeup's on anymore. She got through it like a champ. I'm just so proud of her and I know that did not feel good. I just can't believe Adam watched the whole thing. Yeah, I watched the whole thing. I'm normally like... I sent my mom photos the entire time. Yeah, yeah, but I'm proud of you. Hopefully the worst part's over. We now have to go down the street to get an x-ray on my wrist because my wrist doesn't feel right. I don't know if it's broken. It doesn't seem swollen, but just had a precaution. We're gonna go do that next. Fun times. What a day at Mammoth Cave. Yeah. So I just got my wrist x-rayed and now we're headed back to the urgent care to find out if there's any damage to my wrist. I'm still having a very hard time telling like there's pain there, but my hand also still burns. So there's just a lot of pain happening. It's kind of hard to pinpoint it. So we'll see. So good news. My wrist is apparently not broken, not fractured. They said it looked good. They're still waiting on the radiologist to look at it, but he's pretty confident my wrist is okay. So that's good news. So I just have this bandage for the next 10 days and eight stitches below and yeah. Yeah, the day's not gone as planned. That's for sure. But one thing that will make today better is I'm going to get a blizzard at DQ. Coming in with the cure-all. Got, as they say, the Reese's and the pecan pie blizzard. Whoo-hoo. Gonna be one-handed for a little bit. Hmm. Nope. I don't want to risk spilling it. That would make the day even worse. Boo-choo! At least we're laughing. Oh yeah, that's just what we needed. That's a pecan pie one. That's so good. Our original plan for today was after the hike we were gonna go on a cave tour, which is the number one thing to do here in the park. And we were gonna do the historic cave tour, which is $20 a person, two hours long, and you walk two miles through the cave. You learn all kinds of interesting history about the cave. It's not just the typical geology that you would think you would learn on a cave tour. And unfortunately over the next couple days all the tours are booked up. So we're gonna miss it this time. But we did book this campsite that we're gonna enjoy for the rest of the day and tonight. And here in a little bit we're going to attempt to redeem a campfire meal that we made about a year ago that didn't go so well. So I went inside of the camp store to get some firewood because we read that you can't bring firewood into the park. And the only thing they had in there, which the only firewood you're allowed to burn in the park, are these little deals called bio-blocks. They're basically just a bunch of sawdust, like dry kilned. So kind of the similar as regular campfire wood that's dry kilned also. But this is just sawdust that comes super compressed into these blocks. And this is what you burn. I never heard or seen of these before, but I guess they work just the same. Today we are making campfire pizza. And you may remember we attempted this once before at Glacier National Park and it was a complete disaster. The pizza stuck to the pan. It was more like a giant bagel bite. Still tasted good, but it just wasn't aesthetically pleasing. So we've done some more research. We have a ton of screenshots on our phone of the best way to do this and we're going to give it another shot. First up, we're gonna preheat our cast iron pan and we're using the lid to our Dutch oven. Preheat those real quick. Last time we had a bit of a sticking problem. So a few people recommended parchment paper to line the the pan with that. So we're gonna give that a shot this time. We're gonna cook the dough a little bit first. In about four minutes, let's take a peek at it. Still needs some more time. It's looking good though. Yeah, it looks good though. Not sticking. That's a good sign. All right, after another four minutes, it's looking pretty good under there. So far, it's a smashing success. Look around the edges there. You got some crispy cheese. And now for the moment of truth. It looks good, but does it taste good? The flavor is 10 out of 10. This is so good. Way better than last time. We have definitely redeemed our pizza attempt. This is super duper good and the crust is actually pretty dang good. So today didn't go as we hoped or had planned, but it'll definitely be a memorable one, unfortunately. I could totally have done without today though, but we'll remember it forever. So we're not checking this park off of our list because we didn't get to do the number one thing there is to do here at Mammoth Cave. So we'll definitely be back someday. In a while. Yeah. After I recover from this kind of traumatic experience. But as we mentioned, we're currently on our way back to Texas for the holidays and we have a bunch of stops we plan to make on the way back. But to be honest, after today, we're very just physically and emotionally drained and I'm still in quite a bit of pain. So part of us wants to just book it back to Texas, but the other part wants to do everything we planned and end the year on a super fun note. So we don't really know what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a day or two and just kind of regroup and just see how I'm feeling and then see what we feel up to. So we're gonna continue our drive back to Texas. We don't know what all we're gonna do. We'll try to have some fun and we'll see ya where we see ya. So it's two days later and we just went through Memphis, Tennessee and crossed into Arkansas, which are two places that we had hoped to explore over the next few days. But about an hour ago we made the difficult decision to just book it back to Austin as fast as we can. To be honest, the last couple of days have been very rough, very frustrating. You don't really realize how much you rely on both hands, even your non-dominant hand, until you can't really use it. So it's been really hard not being able to do much for myself, but on the plus side, Adam is learning how to do a ponytail now. And he's getting better. It was hard at first, but he's getting there. So he's gaining some new skills while I lose some skills. But beyond just the annoyance and frustration of not having two working hands, my wrist is in a lot of pain and despite them saying that they didn't think anything was wrong with it, nothing was broken, I'm not a hundred percent convinced that it is okay. So we figured it was best to just get back to Austin, rest, see if it feels better or not. And if not, go get a second opinion just so that way we're not prolonging any injuries by waiting around. So we're currently about 640 miles and nine hours from my parents house in Austin. We're gonna try to drive almost four more hours today to get close to the Texas border, so that way we don't have as much driving to do tomorrow, and then we'll officially get back tomorrow to my parents house. We are back in Texas. It's been eight months since we left Texas earlier in the year, and that's now the longest stretch we've been away since living in the van. A little road trip update. We are three hours and 15 minutes from my parents house, and we just heard the dreaded noise that you hear when you're driving, a rock hitting your windshield, and it left a really good crack. I don't know why, but it just has not been our week. The universe does not like us this week. All right. Three more hours. Get me out of here. Get us off this highway into my parents house. We made it. I got my stitches out today, but if this experience has taught me anything, it's that I am a baby when it comes to pain, and I should probably be put under for any type of medical procedure. The stitches, he said it looked good, that the wound looks good, but it had scabbed a bit, and some of the stitches were kind of like under the scab. Sounds kind of gross, but it was so painful at times. I was like starting to do this thing where I started like shaking pretty bad, and I had to lay down, and then the room was kind of spinning, and I felt like I was gonna pass out, which I've never felt that before. He'd like spray some numbing spray on it so he could get the stitches out, and yeah, I felt like a humongous baby, but my stitches are out. I just got another x-ray on my wrist because it's still bothering me. It's probably nothing, but I just want to be sure, so I'll find out I guess later today if my wrist is okay or not, but I'm like, oh. Got them out though. I got them out. I no longer have the wrap. Are you ready for high fives? No, it still hurts even just sitting here right now, but I'm on the mend. So that is how we went from this to this at Mammoth Cave National Park, so it has been about a month since the injury, and I'm not a hundred percent quite yet. I still have a little bit of wrist pain, and it's still kind of sensitive on the actual wound because it's healing, but I'm doing so much better, and we're just really thankful that it wasn't worse and that it happened when it did because we were already on our way back to Texas anyways. Even before hurting my hand, our plan was to get back to Texas before Thanksgiving and take a much-needed break from filming, and just spend time with family and friends, catch up on so much work for our website, and just relax a little bit, and we're really thankful that we had such a backlog of videos from the year that we were able to take such a nice break while we're here, but since our videos didn't really end the way we had planned and our time on the road ended kind of abruptly, we are gonna film one more video so we can end the year on a happier note.