With all the buzz about the #alternativefacts terrorist massacre in Bowling Green, Kentucky, it’s a good time to plan a visit to the city where every Chevrolet Corvette in the world is produced, and where one of the largest National Parks in the USA is located.
The GM Corvette Assembly Plant and adjoining National Corvette Museum and nearby NCM Motorsports Park often rate as the state’s top visitor destinations.
The museum showcases more than 80 historic Corvettes in period settings, including mint classics, one-of-a-kind prototypes and current models. All of them are wonders of American muscle car power, engineering and design. Displays rotate every six months or so, including special exhibits.
Through May, there’s a celebration of 40 years of Callaway Cars, the engine design company best known for its modification of Chevy Corvettes, especially their twin-turbo kit that became a dealer option, including the record breaking Corvette Sledgehammer car. Vroom!
You can do hotlaps at NCM Motosports Park, and tour the factory. Even if you aren’t a vintage car geek (as I am), expect to spend at least a half day drooling over the ‘Vettes in the museum and taking the factory tour. If you are lucky, you’ll be there when a new Corvette owner picks up his/her Made in America sportscar at the factory, to cheers from the workers.
- GM Corvette Assembly Plant tours are weekdays only. More information here.
- National Corvette Museum is open daily. More information here.
- Motorsports park hotlaps are weekdays only. More information here.
Mammoth Cave National Park is the longest known cave system in the world, part of a 53,000 acre park, one of the largest in the National Park System. More than 12 miles of caves over several levels are open to the public, and new passages continue to be discovered. Most popular sections are Frozen Niagara, known for its waterfall-like flowstone formations, and Gothic Avenue, where the ceiling is covered in 19th-century visitors’ signatures. Trails take in other park features like the Green and Nolin rivers and the sinkholes of Cedar Sink.
- Park Rangers lead tours. More information here.
Bowling Green’s other natural wonder is Lost River Cave, a seven-mile cave system with a river running through it. Take Kentucky’s only underground boat tour, which Ripley’s Believe It or Not claims is the shortest and deepest underground river in the world.
And there’s food history in Bowling Green, too.
Foodies will appreciate that Duncan Hines was born here, and is buried here. Duncan Hines was a traveling salesman in the early 1900s, who spent so much time on the road that he wrote a book about where to eat and sleep, reviewing hotels and restaurants from with personal experience. It was one of the very first travel guidebooks ever published. Duncan Hines also one of the very first people to “brand” his name and personna, to the cake mix company.
Another local favorite is Chaney’s Dairy Barn, a real working family-owned dairy farm that also happens to make the best ice cream in Kentucky according to USA Today’s “The USA’s Best Ice Cream: Top Parlors in 50 States”
Bowling Green is one hour north of Nashville. Find out more about Bowling Green on the city’s official tourism website.
Was this more than 5 reasons to visit Bowling Green now? Okay, so ecoXplorer is guilty of #alternativemath.
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