Underground we go!

Underground we go!

Monday 9/8/14  Nolin Lake, KY

Today’s plan was to do 2 tours in the Mammoth Caves.  Our first Tour is “Historic” tour which starts at 10am and ends at 12.  We were up and ready to leave the house (RV) by 9am.  We drove the 15 miles to Mammoth Caves Visitor Center which includes the quick ferry ride across the river.  We arrived at 9:30am, took our last bathroom break for awhile and went to pavilion “A” as instructed.  We were there only about 5 minutes when our tour guide arrived and started telling us some history about the cave.  What I found to be very interesting which I didn’t learn till the end of the tour was our tour guide “Jerry” is not only a native to this area, but his family’s history in the area goes back as far as his great, great, great (not sure how many “greats” it was) Grandfather who was a slave here and one of the very first to give tours here in the early 1800’s.  You see his name carved on the walls every so often “Mat”.  We walked down a long hill behind the visitor center to the Cave entrance for this tour.  There were 470 something stairs on this 2 mile trip underground.  Oh boy!  The Caves themselves are massive and as of 2014 there is 400 miles of mapped caves making Mammoth Caves the largest single cave system in the world.  This section of the cave which is also the oldest used to be mined in the 1800’s for minerals that was used to make gun powder.  There is still plenty of preserved mining stuff there for you to see.  I found  it neat how they used “white oak” (I think) trees as pipe lines to pump the minerals from within the cave through the center of the trees using water.  First they would take the tree truck and hollow out the center from one end to the other making it like a drinking straw, then make one end pointed and put the pointed end into the next tree and so on to create the pipe line.  Cool!  Once we finished our first tour we had about an hour before our 2^nd tour “Frozen Niagara” began so we walked over to the Mammoth Caves hotel and grabbed some lunch at the Coffee shop/restaurant.  Jami had a chicken salad and I got the Mammoth burger with fries.  That hit the spot!  We finished up eating with 10 minutes to spare.  We walked over to pavilion “B” and arrived just before our tour guide, perfect.  He began telling more history of the cave, some we already learned and some new that pertained more to this tour.  This “Frozen Niagara” tour is one of the more recent great discoveries in the caves. This section of the cave is the only section that has stalagmites, stalactites, columns, bacon, and other formations made by water.  We loaded up on a bus that took us over to the cave entrance about 3 miles away.  This tour had more beauty in it with all the formations made by the water seeping through the lime stone rock, but the first tour had much more history.  I know I haven’t given you much description on the caves themselves because words cannot explain it, or at least mine cant. J   If you’ve experienced caves before then you will probably understand.  Below are a few pictures, but being there is no flash photography allowed and the lights are dim the pictures don’t give it justice.  

 

 

"Historic Tour" pictures

The walk to the cave entrance

 

Tour guide Jerry giving us our safety instructions

 

 Cave entrance

 

 One of the places where the dirt was "washed" to remove the minerals used to make gun powder

 

 Cave picture

 

 Cave picture

 

 Cool how the light reflects of the stairs hand rails

 

 

 Cave picture, long way down

 

On the way out of Cave

 

 

 

"Frozen Niagara" tour

 

 Frozen Niagara

 

 Ceiling where water is leaking in

 

 Deep hole

 

"Cave crickets" on cave ceiling.  They look more like big spiders.  

Once finished we took the bus back to the visitor center, hopped in or truck and made our way back home.  Once home I drained our kitchen grey tank into our “Blue Boy” so we could do some laundry and took the “blue boy” down to the dump station to empty it.  Next on my “to do” list when I got back was to replace a broken park on our air compressor.  With a few tools and 30 minutes that was complete so I went ahead and checked all the tires and added air to a few of them while Jami was vacuuming out both trucks.  “To do” list complete! J   Jami & I sat outside for a bit enjoying the nice weather before going inside for dinner. 

Oh, and if your interested in reading more about the Mammoth Caves try this link. http://www.poplargrovewingsandwheels.com/index.asp?SEC=CF378085-213D-4DA7-95F8-8EEC2009D1E4&Type=B_BASIC