Day 30 – Just one more cave, I promise

Mammoth Caves

We had a nice relaxing morning today, since we’d booked a cave tour that started at 10, and was only a short walk away.  (The best part of the Mammoth Cave campground is that it’s so close to the visitor center and all the tours, along with many hiking trails.  We’ve become accustomed to all the huge national parks where you might have to drive half an hour to get to where you want to go.  We love it when we arrive someplace where we can set off on foot and give the poor van a break.)

Mammoth Cave is thought to be the largest cave in the world, and much of it is still unexplored.  There are quite a variety of different tours here, ranging from short and easy to long and strenuous.  We chose a middle path, and went with a two-hour, moderate difficulty tour called the New Entrance tour.  (It was not actually all that strenuous, since most of the walking was down stairs, but since the stairs were very steep and spanning deep chasms below, it was definitely not for the acrophobic.)  This was probably my favorite cave of the trip – the cave scenery was impressive and the ranger was knowledgeable and fun. 

In the afternoon we dragged the kids (or at least 2/3 of them required dragging) on a hike down past the natural entrance of the cave.  In the other caves we’ve visited, there was never much of a natural entrance – sometimes a small hole in the rock that the guide would point out on your way through the revolving door that they’d drilled into the cave for tours.  This cave had a real entrance like you’d picture a cave should have – a great black opening in the hillside, with cold air rushing from it.  You could walk into the “vestibule” without a tour, and we even saw a bat hanging on the wall.  Further along the hike, we saw the place where the underground river that had formed the cave emerged and joined the Green River above ground.

The natural entrance to the cave.  

We’d planned to do another hike into a sinkhole, but Lanie was just about at the end of her rope (her enthusiasm for hiking having been on the wane for several days), and Bob and I weren’t at our best either, since we both seem to be coming down with something.  So it was a quiet afternoon at the campground, which now – on Sunday afternoon – had become almost as much of a ghost town as Hannibal.  Tonight we had a campfire – probably our last, so we finally used up the rest of our s’more supplies.

***

The River Styx emerges from the cave

Lanie has declared, "One of my talents is
drying dishes."  It's nice to have one child
who's still at an age where they feel it's
fun to do chores.  She is pretty talented
at doing dishes, except that it takes her
approximately 10 minutes per dish.  She
is very thorough.

From Bob:

This is considered one of the three crown jewels of America’s caves (along with Carlsbad Caverns and Jewell Cave) according to our guide Ranger Steve. This gave me a pang because, as you know, we passed on Jewell Cave when we were in South Dakota.  Ranger Steve said that Jewell Cave really pales in comparison to Mammoth and Carlsbad, and that he wishes he went to Wind Cave instead of Jewell when he was in South Dakota.  This made me feel better.

There were some beautiful, very old trees along our hike

                Truthfully, although the caves are very interesting here, the most remarkable part of our tour was the stairway that leads you down hundreds of feet of vertical channels once you enter at what they call the “New Entrance.”  They wind among the rocks and give brief glimpses of the 100-foot drops stretch below.  Of course, by now we know that I eat 100-foot drops for breakfast with my granola bars, so I really enjoyed this part of the journey, though some of our co-spelunkers had trouble with it. 

                Ranger Steve said the man who created this entrance and exploited the caves in the 30s built wooden stairs down.  When it came under the NPS, they ripped out the wooden stairs and contracted out to have metal stairs built.  Nobody could figure out how to do it until one submarine contractor came along.  His company took six years, but they engineered what I think is a marvel.

                Another highlight of our cave tour: We got to see a bat and cave crickets.  Unfortunately, the tour where you get to see the eyeless cave fish was sold out.  All-in-all, though, I am happy with our cave adventures on this trip.   It’s always nice and comfortable down there, just remember to bring your sweatshirt.

                We’re down to just one night in the tent left.  Then it’s bed, beds, beds all the way home.