Mammoth Caves to Wytheville, Virginia
It wasn't easy to photograph the lantern tour. Flash would not have been appreciated. |
The rangers had all raved about this tour, and we weren’t
disappointed. In addition to the cool
cave scenery, made especially romantic when lit only by old-fashioned gas
lanterns, part of our route was along what’s called the Historic tour. Now I’m as shallow and easily bored as the
next person, and I have to admit the words “historic cave tour” hadn’t jumped
out at me as bursting with excitement. I
thought it would be dry statistics about who discovered the cave and when and
blah blah blah. Instead, we saw the
following, perfectly preserved due to the cave’s constant 54 degree temperature
and 80% humidity: wooden pipes, made of poplar trees, that were used in a
saltpeter mining operation run during the War of 1812, a ladder installed by
Native Americans 2000-3000 years ago, various other Native American artifacts
and drawings, 2500-year-old human poop, and stone huts – build right in the
middle of the cave’s large passages, about a mile in – that were used to house
tuberculosis patients in the hopes that the “healthy” cave air would provide a
cure. (In fact, it had the opposite
effect – but the patients had agreed that they wouldn’t leave the cave until
they were cured or dead. Some of them
spent 10 months in the cold, damp
darkness of the cave – until there were sufficient fatalities that the medical
authorities in charge decided to ban the experiment. And in the meantime, tours were going through
the cave, passing by the huts and peering at the patients.) We saw the original rock paths used by tours
in the 1800s, and walked on paths built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in
the 1930s. All in all, quite an
experience and well worth the price of admission.
Endless Kentucky (or possibly Virginia) road |
After this exciting morning, we got in the car and drove
approximately 27 hours across Kentucky and Virginia. Or at least it felt that way. Someone needs to build an east/west highway
here, stat. It seems impossible to
believe that the route we took was the most efficient one, so maybe google was
just messing with us.
***
From Bob:
The driving portion of this day got off to a bad start and
it didn’t end that well, either. The
best thing about today is that we got our laundry washed and dried (though not
folded and sorted) and we got out of our campsite on time. Also, Zoe got to do a special lantern-lit
cave tour with Jen. Nadia and Lanie are
probably happy that they could afford Pop-Tarts from the camp store while we
laundered. We managed to get some
postcards off, too, and the laundry room had a few spare outlets that I could
charge things in. So the morning was
actually a pretty productive time.
Then we
went to leave and drove around for a half hour and things started looking
familiar. Hey, there’s a sign for
Mammoth Caves. Is this a different part
of the park? No, we just drove in a big
circle. Jen was making sandwiches in the
passenger seat and I must’ve got wrapped up in the book on CD (thanks for
nothing, Crossman-Ellis family and your engaging audio literature).
After
that it was just a slog through Kentucky, which I’m sure is a fine state, but
it was like driving through molasses.
Even the brief bit of Tennessee we got into (I would not have thought it
was possible to be in a state for a shorter duration than we were in Idaho, but
such was our experience in Tennessee) and the novelty of going through the
Cumberland Gap did not save the afternoon.
This is because driving through western Virginia is rather like driving
through Kentucky.
Even
the knowledge that there was a mattress waiting for me and not a Thermarest did
not perk me up. I was perked up a little
by the pizza from Pizza Plus in Duffield, VA.
We’ve been pizza-starved this trip, so any that we get seems good. We may have left our one true chance for
great pizza behind in Chicago with Colleen, but that was so early in the trip
that it wasn’t high on our agenda. And
Colleen took us to some really top-notch places to eat, too, so we have no
complaints. It won’t be too long before
we can order a White Buffalo at La Festa again.
Talking about pizza is not making
my headache feel any better. I would say
I’m dehydrated, but I had seven glasses of water at Pizza Plus. It’s rather a hybrid fast-food,
waitress-service place and although we sat near the soda fountain, the waitress
was pouring our waters from a pitcher she brought out from the back. If I could have gotten to that soda fountain,
I might have drunk more water. I don’t
feel thirsty now, I feel smoky. On this,
our last night in a campground (we’re in spacious, two-room KOA cabin), we seem
to be downwind from all the other sites.
Enough
complaining. Good night.
One more
complaint: Although they clearly call it Mammoth Caves, there was not a single
mammoth to be seen. This seems like
false advertising.
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