Saturday, August 27, 2011

Spelunking in Mammoth Cave, KY




Well, here we are in Cave City just outside Mammoth Cave National Park. It's Saturday and Mom and Dad catched a ride with an RV Park staffer over to the park. I hung out in the RV with the AC on. Outside temp is around 88 degrees so I needed the AC. We stayed Thursday in a park outside Louisville, and then drove down early yesterday morning to Bowling Green to get some things fixed on the camper at Camping World, an RV dealer and servicer.Then we drove back up to Cave City about 53 miles Northeast of Bowling Green.

Here's Dad's description of the Mammoth Cave experience:

"We signed up for the "New Entrance" tour. This trip includes a dramatic series of domes and pits, typical large trunk passageways and includes the dramatic frozen Niagra Tour and a portion of the Grand Avenue tour. Now the descent is a bit strenuous going down 280 steps in very narrow passages. Once we reached the bottom we wound our way through large galleries, and tunnels, including amazing limestone stalagtites and stalagmites.

With more than 390 miles of cave passgageways, Mammoth Cave ranks as the longest known cave in the world. Mammoth Cave was established in 1941. In 1981, the park was designated a World Heritage Site, and became the core area of an International Biosphere Reserve in 1990. Here are photos of our experience. The most interesting part of the tour was toward the end, where we saw dazzling lime stone formations. We also saw some bats and cave insects. The hike down was scary since we were going straight down and looking down through the grated steps in what was basically 200 foot pit, gave us the willies. Pat complained that her legs were totally sore, so recovery tonight will be required so pass the scotch!"

Tomorrow we head back east and stay outside of Atlanta, then home on Monday!






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