First National Park! (On this trip)

So I am headed to Mammoth Cave National Park today! Linn was so sweet and made sure I was properly fed and watered before I left. I told the girls to come visit me in California. I tell everyone to come visit me in California.

I did it!! 

So there are all kinds of tours. There was a self-guided tour, which was only $6, and several others that cost money. I went up the ticket counter to get a ticket and the lady said there was really only the self guided tour available. She said, "You need more than one ticket?" and I said no, I just needed the one. Then the whole world opened up to me. She said, "Oh! Well in that case, we have one spot left in this tour and this tour and I recommend going on this one because you get to see the most and it's $17, so with the self-guided tour, you'll see most of the caves!" So I said, "Okay, let's do it!" Then she told me how much she liked to travel alone too, and how great it was to always be on your own schedule, eat wherever you want to eat, stay wherever you want to stay, sleep until you want to sleep, do whatever you want to do. I mean, yeah. That has been amazing. 

Unbridled, I say. 

I had quite a bit of time before the guided tour became, so I went through the visitors' center exhibit. This is a 3D map of all the caves. There are 400-some miles of cave and they're still discovering more. 

The park itself is quite pleasant. The weather was perfect too, around 85 and sunny, no humidity. A huge relief after those days in Baltimore.

Into the caves. This is the main entrance, where most tours start. I was walking down these stairs and I thought, "Why am I doing this again?"

Here I am, trying to look relaxed. 

Here I am, showing my true feelings on the situation. 

Quite lovely though. 

If there is one piece of advice I can give you, bring a sweater. It's 50 degrees in the caves. It gets cold, fast. 

Hello, World! 

It's a little shallow, but not really that close. I was okay with it. You're not allowed to touch the rock, including the ceiling, which is a good thing they told me because I definitely felt the urge to put my hand up when I was walking through here, just because it's so low and close to your head. 

Creepy. 

Strange little marker. 

They mined down here originally.

Explanation of the above picture. 

I knew you guys were going to want to read all these so I took photos of each one. It's pretty incredible, really, to think about exploring these caves before there were battery operated headlamps and lights everywhere to see. Imagine how dark. Actually, later in the day, I found out exactly how dark on the guided tour when the tour guides turned off the lights at a point when we were all sitting down. I've never been in such darkness in my life. 

Drops like these are pretty common. Please watch your step and stay on the clearly marked path. 

This was an entrance that was just a big pile of rocks now. But it was maybe half a mile or so between this entrance and the main entrance, so when it was open, it was probably a pretty easy jaunt from one side to the other. 

MUSHROOMS. 

So a very sad thing has happened and there is a terrible disease killing 90% of the bats that live in the caves. They wake up when they're not supposed to and go out to eat and there isn't any bugs for them to eat because it isn't the right time and they end up starving. SAD FACE! It's upsetting that this is happening at all, poor little bats, but also very sad because it's seriously messing with the ecosystem because a single bat eats 1,000 insects per day. That's an insane amount of insects. 

In order to prevent this from spreading, we had to walk across mats that were soaked in water and a disinfectant each time we walked out of the cave. 

Kentucky is really beautiful. At least this area is. 

Walking between the entrances.

So apparently there was a guy named George and he was a terrible entrepreneur. He failed a lot at everything he tried to do and because of this they called him "Faily George" or "No Go George" or some such variation thereof. Okay, so I don't remember the exact phrase. But anyway, he saw that Mammoth Cave was making a ton of money and people were paying a lot to go into them, so he decided he was going to buy the land next to it and blow it up until he struck more cave. He did, miraculously, and then he sent his nephew in to explore it, and when said nephew didn't die, he decided to charge people for admittance. Hence the huge hole in the ground here; which people are walking down. He seems like a real stand-up kind of guy. But anyway, now the park owns his land and this is the second entrance that they also use. 

Before we got onto the bus to take us to this entrance for the tour, our park ranger and tour guide Dawn told us many horror stories about how tiny the caves were and how they were so small she was going to have to take off her hat to squeeze through some of the hallways or whatever, so if you're claustrophobic, this is not the tour for you. Then she said we were going to walk down 527 stairs and so if you're in bad physical condition, this is not the tour for you. Once there was a medical emergency and it took them 7 hours to get out of the cave because the EMT had to come down and carry them out of the cave. I started to get really nervous and almost backed out. 

I'm very glad I did not. Yes, there were many stairs, but they were like narrow hallways in a house. They were that bad at all. 

Yeah, I mean, I guess she probably had to take off her hat. And I had to do a little creative walking with my head very far past my left foot on occasion to not hit the rocks sticking out, but it was not worth the 10 minutes of scary stories at the beginning. 

Looking down. It's a bit of a ways, so don't fall down. 

Narrow stairways. 

These two photos are looking up. The tour was aptly called Domes and Dripstones. These are the domes.

Pretty intense, right? 

Everywhere I looked, it was just, wow.

Hey! It's Ranger Dawn! So a few times during the tour we got to a large room where they'd set up many benches and there were probably 65 or 75 people on this tour. It was huge. So it'd take them like 7 minutes to all file in and sit down. (It was during one of these times that they turned out the lights.) Then Ranger Dawn was adorable and excited and told us stories about the tour and asked if anyone had any questions and lots of little kids had questions. I've discovered that I'm one of these people who always wants to be first and wants to stand right next to the tour guide and wants to wander around and look at everything and raise their hand to answer questions first. Oooo! Me! Me! I know. Think Hermione Granger. 

This is a fossil. It is my understanding that there are many in the caves, but this one was right next to the path and Ranger Dawn left her flashlight there for us specifically to see it.

Graffiti. People are awesome. 

Some of these are quite blurry, and it was hard for me to tell because it was so dimly lit, but I figure it's important to see what you can to get the best idea. 

The cave really opened up on the second part of the tour. 

Before we got to the Frozen Niagara, which is what this is, there was an awesome lady who asked how the caves weren't falling in because humans are awful and are always building. Ranger Dawn was very logical and tried to tell her that the caves had stabilized millions of years ago and they weren't going to fall in. That did not impress said lady. She insisted that people build buildings and they tear away the earth and these caves are going to fall. I don't think she understood how far we were below the ground. It was like, thousands of feet. Did she forget about the 527 down? I don't know. It seemed pretty crazy that she was worried that humans were going to be building, in a National Park no less, so heavily that it would cause million year old caves thousands of feet below the ground to collapse. But she was sure it was going to happen. There was no talking her out of it, this one. 

These are stalactites. You can see now why they call it the Frozen Niagara, though to be fair, it is about 1/10th the size of the actual Niagara.

This is a baby column, which is what happens when a stalactite and a stalagmite reach each other and grow together. Makes sense. 

This was down a few more stairs and back up again. Ranger Dawn brought her flashlight to show us special pieces. There she is in the corner. 

Pointing out baby stalactites. 

This is looking straight up. Blurry, but you can kind of see the intense number of stalactites.

So I guess if you're super hardcore you get to wear a hardhat and go serious spelunking. I don't know. I wasn't offered that tour. 

Everywhere I looked I was just like, WHOA. Intense. So glad I spent the extra $17 and was able to snag that last ticket. 

So this is a cave cricket. It is apparently the basis of all food chains inside the cave. Other creatures eat it, including parasites, and build with its poop, and Ranger Dawn was entirely too excited about it. 

A lovely little cave spider on our way out the door. 

After that I got in my car and drove to Tennessee. It was a pretty decent drive; I drove about 1.5 hours from Louisville to Mammoth, stayed there for several hours, though I did cross a time zone so it was very confusing, and then managed to make it to Rock Island by 7 pm, with just enough daylight to set up my tent. I'll tell you what I don't like about driving through Kentucky. I don't like the number of butterflies I ran into with my car. I ran into like 8 butterflies with my car! Both on my way to and from Louisville! What is that?? I've never hit a butterfly in my life and I hit so many in Kentucky. Very upsetting. 

I did it!! I didn't practice putting up this tent before I left, so this was all new to me. But I figured it out! The guy at the campsite next to me was camping with his two sons, which is so sweet, and he walked by after the tent was already up and asked if I needed a helper. I said, "Not anymore, thanks!"

Isn't my campsite so cute?? Unfortunately I got there right before it got dark so I had just enough time to set up my tent and then I was ready for bed. I went into my tent at 8, read for about an hour, and fell asleep around 9. I'm a wild kind of gal. 

I head to South Carolina tomorrow to visit my friend Allison. I plan on seeing the park tomorrow and then heading out and being there in the late afternoon. Two states to cross off my list, kids!! Woot!