6/13 60 29mi 2:16 sonora,KY

Woke up and jointly decided to hitchhike to the mammoth caves because we really didn't feel like riding the 80 mile dtour and adding another couple of days to the trip. Got to sonora around 11. We stashed our bikes behind a tree and locked them up. Ate subway for lunch and made a couple of signs. One read mammoth cave and another read south. We stuck our thumbs out for awhile and no takers. Finally after an hour when I was just about ready to give up a couple named jerome and sara in a jeep gave us a lift to cave city which was 9 miles east of mammoth cave. We thanked them for th ride and then started walking holding out our signs. About 15 minutes later Steve from florida was giving us a lift in his truck. He was on a roadtrip himself and was visiting his brother. He dropped us off at the visitor center and wished us good luck. All the longer more exciting tours were all sold out and we ended up geting a guided tour for 45 minutes which was interesting. At least we got to see the caves, so I shouldn't complain. We finished the tour around 5:30 and started walking back towards cave city. A guy named alex picked us up in his bronco and gave us a lift to cave city. He invited us to go camping with him and his family at his buddies pond, which we would have done except that our bikes were locked up 40 miles away from us with all our stuff. We had some subway sandwiches made and prepared for the possibility of maybe walking all night back to our bikes if we couldn't get a ride. Just outside the cave city limits a guy let us ride in the back of his pickup to munfordville. We were still about 20 miles away from sonora. Stopped at a cvs pharmacy to use the restroom and the lady asked if I was a biker. I told her were we were, but we were trying to get back to sonora to our bikes after hitching to mammoth cave. I went outside and sat down toeat my sandwich when One of the ladies popped her head out the door and said that the other cashiers husband was coming to pick her up and would give us a ride to sonora. He showed up about 5 minutes later and we all got into his car and took off. He narrowly avoided a dog that had wandered into the road during the drive back to our bikes. Mike and I thanked them for the ride and celebrated the day of hitchhiking and seeing the mammoth caves with an energy drink (our first of the trip) and subway sandwiches. It was around 11 at night and I thought that I remembered seeing a ballfield/park just west of town. We rode around for about 20 minutes and then turned around and ended up just throwing down our sleeping pad in a grassy field in the middle of town. I woke up with a bad stomachache in the middle of the night which I think was caused by the massive amounts of candy and pop we had consumed during the day. The energy drink to cap it off probably didn't help either. 2 trains went by in the middle of the night which was pretty cool because we were about 30 feet away from the tracks. They were loud though and woke me up. Glad to see the mammoth caves and don't think that people from kentucky see many hitchhikers. The locals certainly don't stop.