Day 3 – The Corvette Assembly Plant, Corvette Museum, and Diamond Caves

We are up before 6:00 am this morning (Friday 6/2/2017) for our tour of the Corvette Assembly plant.  We had an 8:15 am tour time and they want you there about ½ hour early; to go over the rules, like no cameras, phones, purses and to sign papers.  How am I going to show you pictures of the plant and the assembly?  Oh well!  Here’s Carmen as we head to an underpass on our way to the entrance.

The Plant tour was fantastic!  Before going on the tour we had to divest ourselves of cameras, cell phones, bags, canes, etc.  None of that was allowed.  We watched a short film of the cars from the beginning, learning that the Corvette is the longest running production car.  After a short safety briefing we each grabbed a pair of safety goggles and moved out to the assembly floor. 

We walked along the car assembly floor and were able to see cars moving along at different stages.  We could also see where the aluminum frame started its route from the beginning.  As we traveled along different assembly areas, we learned that the transmission is actually in the back of the car!  And there are two gas tanks with automatic evening.  Wow, never new that!

We even passed where they build the high-performance engines and if you were buying one you could help build the engine.  Off to the side, at a different location, we could see the engines that are already built and are waiting to get onto a frame.  Every single corvette on the assembly line is already purchased and belongs to someone.  They do not make any just on spec, unless a dealer bought one.  We highly recommend if you are ever in this area to stop and take the tour; fantastic. 

On our way to the Museum we stopped at the office entrance where they had a couple of Corvettes for show.  This red Stingray is only $55,500.00 if you’re interested.  Oh, if you buy a new one, for a mere $5,000.00 you can follow your car as it moves along the assembly line and at the end you get to start the car and get a “birth” certificate.

These cars must belong to people who work at the plant because they all had regular license plates. 

After the plant tour, which lasted a little over an hour, we headed over to the Corvette Museum.  They have a big Corvette show here today, what luck!  The parking lot is like a big car show.  Look at all of these cars.

As we get to the entrance to the museum, they saw this 1963 split window in a revolving display.  What a gorgeous car.

Several cars were inside from the car show part of the event that was going on.  We checked out the cars paying particular attention to several, including this Z-28 Camero; very nice.

Or, how would you like to own this 1955 Chevy wagon?

Then there was this Le Mans racing Corvette by Hendrick Motorsports.  The driver actually sits in the center of the car. 

Anyway enough of other people’s cars, we are here to see the museum.  There were 7 wall displays showing each of the generations of design and pictures of each year of the generation.  At the 1^st generation screen, the 1957 was pictured.  Nice looking car.

There are many cars here and not nearly enough time to show them all to you, so we’ll give you a good account of some of the cars.  A number of cars on display are race cars like this 1963 Corvette.  The owner worked for a company that made medical tools and he used surplus to help build the car like chrome cobalt artificial hip joint heads. 

How about these cars?  1953, ’54, and ’55 Corvettes. 

And look at this display of a 50’s Mobil gas station.  There are three corvettes on display a ’57 getting gas, a ’58 in the bay, and a ’59 to the right in the other bay not in the picture. 

The ’58 and’59 in the garage bays.  The interesting thing that I found out on the 58’s and 59’s placards, and didn't know was that all of the Corvettes in those years were convertibles.  Also, look behind the black ’59 on the right and you’ll see that gas was 25.9¢ a gallon.

This was Roy Orbison’s 1967 Corvette, which he drove as his regular personal car to the studio during the making of “The Traveling Wibury’s”.  It is on loan from his wife, Barbara. 

On display were several more racing corvettes. 

Check out this 1957 racing corvette.  It was suppose to run at the 12 and 24-hours endurance runs at Sebring in Florida, but the car wasn’t completed for testing and the car only ran 23 laps before overheating and other problems.  Shortly after the Automobile Manufacturers Association decided to disassociate themselves from participating in motorsports.

Then there is this wild 1968 corvette.  The Astro-Vette was part of an aerodynamic study to see how slippery the Corvette could be made. 

I guess Corvettes are no different then any other car, look at these concept Corvettes.  The one with the body up is a mid-engine concept. 

We eventually made it around to where the sinkhole opened up in the floor of the museum swallowing eight Corvettes.  The one in the upper right was the last and most destroyed car pulled from the hole.  You can still see mud on some of the cars.

On display, one car from each of the 7 generations of the Corvette.  If you look in the bottom right corner of the picture, you can see a metal plate with Plexiglas, this is a window to what is left of the 30 foot drop into the sink-hole.

And lastly, before leaving the museum, we entered a section of Corvettes with big horsepower.  This 1991 Calloway is 1 of 2 series II Super speedsters and has a 755 horsepower twin turbo LT5 engine.

We went out walking around where the vendors were and bought a chance to win a 1955 Chevy.  Although this isn't the car we took a chance on, I surely would have.  Then we had an early lunch at the Corvette Café and can you believe it they also have malts!  It was a pretty good lunch for a museum cafe.  

On the way out we also bought a chance to win a 2017 Corvette, where they are only selling 1000 tickets.  Don’t have a chance in hell of winning, but you never know!  On the way out we can see all of the Corvettes that have come and parked in the rotary just outside the entrance.

We left the Museum and headed to our next destination which is Cave City for our tour of Mammoth Caves tomorrow.  On the way we figured that it was early and decided to stop at Diamond Caves before checking into our hotel.

The caves, like many others, are lighted so you don’t trip and also for effect.  Here we saw an impressive formation.  We can bring our camera, but no tripods or walking sticks (which I was going to use to steady the camera), so many of these pictures may be blurry.

We came upon a section with some interesting formations.   We can see stalactites, stalagmites, and ribbons all over this section.

Venturing to an open location we see more formations creating what the guide calls a T-Rex chewing gum.  Still the formations are interesting to see.

Further along the cave system we see some of the “ribbon” formations which are called “bacon” because of their resemblance to bacon.

Because of the water dripping from the surface, the stalactites continue to grow, about 1 inch every 100 years.

Look at these formations.  It doesn’t look it, but these are quite large dropping from the ceiling 25-30 feet. 

Look at this huge bacon-ribbon formation hanging from the ceiling.

I thought this was interesting.  I took four pictures hoping to get one that would be good and this is the best picture.  Water was dripping down where they had secured a light for the formation and you could see the water splashing.  I tried to not move so much and this is the result without a tripod. 

Some years earlier one of the stalagmites was cut and later polished so you can see the rings created during the minerals settling during its formation.

We happened along where several cave crickets were located and we were able to get a look at them.  The one on the right is female and the one on the right is male.  It is always interesting to see insects and animals in the cave systems.

Leaving the crickets behind, we came upon this formation which looks like 3 melting ice cream cones. 

You can see from the sheen on this formation that there is plenty of water dripping down from the ceiling.

More of the "melting" formations that we have seen in this cave system.  It look neat and I have this need to take pictures of them.  Ha ha.

 As we are making our way out of the cavern system, we have to pass this section with the rock wall on one side and a column formation on the other.  I can just barely make it through while concentrating on not slipping on the wet concrete steps and dropping my camera.  I made it in one piece.

Near the end of our cave tour I was able to get a good view of the “bacon” formation behind a column.  From this view you can clearly see why they call it a bacon strip with the light and dark strips. 

More water falling onto the formations, which I think looks cool.  There are some good formations around where the water is coming down. 

We get our last look of the cave system as we head up the stairs to the surface.  It has been very a nice visit, well worth the unexpected stop on our journey. 

From here we’ll check into our hotel and get some rest for our decent into Mammoth Caves tomorrow.