One of the exciting highlights from our week-long road trip to the Smoky Mountains and Mammoth Cave was driving through the boonies of Kentucky on a chilly night to get to Mammoth Cave in time to grab a few hours of sleep before the cave opened when the above accident happened.

We were flying down a really dark rural county road with the windows open and we began to hear cow bells and they sounded close. I slammed on the brakes and sure enough a herd of cows became visible on the roadway in the headlights. We pulled over to the right and left our lights on to watch the cows just plodding down the road and then noticed a vehicle coming up behind us at high speed. We got out to wave the driver down and instead of braking he plowed broadside right into a cow about 100 feet past us. I'll never forget watching the tail lights of his pickup going up a foot or two in the air at the same time of hearing a loud "BAM!" as he impacted the cow and then all of his lights went out and it was pitch black again except for our headlights. The driver had minor injuries and I wanted to damage him more for being so stupid, but two of us drove back a few miles to the closest town and called the cops. We drove back to the scene and waited for the cops. The cow was injured too badly to survive and the old sheriff's deputy really didn't want to shoot her to put her out of her misery but he did. We lost an hour or two of sleep due to this incident but it was better than either being the cow or totaling our car in the middle of nowhere.

We arrived in the Mammoth Cave area around 1:30 am and fell asleep in the car at 2 am on the 16th.