Mammoth Cave Trip, 2011

Nearly every year we go down to Mammoth Cave because I love it there.  The landscape is gorgeous, all the trees and hills, and the cave is magnificent.  One of my non-important goals in life is to take all the tours as an adult.  We're only 3 tours shy, I think:  Grand Avenue, Violet City Lantern, and River Styx.  Hurray for accomplishing random, useless goals!

When I was a kid, my parents would take us to Mammoth Cave, and I'm pretty sure that's when I fell in love with it.  If I lived closer, I am sure I would be a caver.  As it is, Mammoth Cave is too far of a drive to be routinely involved with the caving societies.  Oh well.  Another lifetime, perhaps.

This time we took Dea and Keith.  Keith hadn't been since those family trips long ago, and Dea'd never been.  Fun!

The girls, waiting for our first tour to start.  These two are best buds.  I imagine we'll be getting them together every summer that we can.  It's a precious relationship.

First tour was the Star Chamber Tour.  It's a lantern tour!  Seriously cool stuff.  The lead tour guide did everything slow, especially the talking.  At one point Keith asked a question and I turned to him after and said, "No more asking questions!"  We would have been there all night.  As it was, the tour ran half an hour long.

In front of the place where people used to get married.  Weird people.  Getting married inside a cave.

Elijah was pretty horrible on the tour, and I wished we'd left him behind with Rob and Tank.  There was an age limit on the tour, so Tank stayed back.  Elijah complained for almost an hour about being cold/tired.  I wanted to shoot him.  "We're trying to have an EXPERIENCE, Elijah!"  Sheesh!  No respect for the cave.

Dea in front of the historical graffiti.  People used to sign their names on the walls using, mostly, candle smoke.  One dot at a time.  The guides would charge a little something and then write the names on the walls and ceilings.  As the guides were usually slaves, this was a good deal for them: they were allowed to pocket the tips.

In front of the monument to Kentucky (the biggest of all the monuments).  In addition to writing their names on the cave, people built monuments to their hometown/university/whatever.  One guy, a Mister A. Hohl (I don't make this stuff up) made a monument to himself.  This was sheer cleverness on the part of the guides.  They were charged by their owner to clear rocks off the path.  So they offered to have people build a monument with the rocks for a small fee.  The guides got out of work AND pocketed some cash.  Genius.

Oh, and that's my brother Keith in the picture.

The best part of the tour for me was that the old tour guide decided to ask for a volunteer to do the Sunrise Sunset demonstration with the trailing tour guide, John.  Ooh!  Me!  Pick me!  I got to hold half the lanterns and walk through a side passage that runs parallel to the main passage.  John and I had all the lights between us, so the group was left in darkness.  We walked away from the group to create the sunset, and then  looped back to them to create the sunrise.  ...  Seriously, I should apply to be a tour guide for a summer.

The next morning was the Snowball Tour.  It's a 3-hour, 2-mile tour.  You walk through Cleveland Avenue, with the pretty gypsum, stop at the Snowball Dining Room for lunch, and then hike out the way you came.  There are a lot of wide passages that go FOREVER, and the gypsum is pretty cool. 

My brother took this picture of the gypsum and I said, "It never turns out well in pictures."  I'm pretty sure you'll agree with me.

This is the man-made Carmichael Entrance that we went through to access Cleveland Avenue.  They blasted straight through the rock and put in lots of stairs.  Without this entrance, Cleveland Avenue is 5 or 6 hours from the main Historic Entrance.  Thank you, dynamite.

The Snowball Dining Room, where we ate lunch.  We bought 4 boxed lunches for the 7 of us, and it worked out perfectly.

Some more historical graffiti.  This wouldn't be nearly so cool if we hadn't been there ourselves on August 17th, 2011.  We didn't plan that, of course, but it was cool anyway.  Nick was one of the original slave guides.

Last tour was the New Entrance Tour.  This tour has 80% of Mammoth Cave's formations.  Or at least 80% of the parts of the cave that they show people.  There are 392 miles of known cave so far.  Maybe someday they'll open up other sections for tours!!!  (I know, I know.  You don't care.  But I do!)

Besides the wicked cool Frozen Niagara section at the end of the tour, there are also these imposing, amazing stairs as you enter:

You can't really tell, I know.  But these stairs fit in-between the rock, winding all the way down.  Took them years to build, and cost them like $1,000 a stair, something like that.  Worth every penny, in my opinion, I'm just glad that I didn't have to build it.  Must have been some brave guys.

More wide passages.  Then Frozen Niagara at the end.  Beautiful.

Then we got out of the cave and drove home, lickety split.  It was a long short trip, if that makes sense.  But it's always worth it to go down to Mammoth Cave.