Mammoth Cave National Park

This past weekend, Ben and I drove down to Cave City, Kentucky as part of a general effort we are making to adventure and see the amazing sights around us in this new place called Ohio. Cave City is about a three hour drive south of Cincinnati, so we decided to leave Friday after work and stay in a hotel/motel for the night and see the sights on Saturday. As we drove into the ever-luxurious Econolodge late Friday night, we were a little shocked by the parking lot. First we saw this:



And when we got back to the parking area by our little room, we saw this:



I know what you're thinking. It's a sure sign the economy is in the dumps when all the corvette owners in the world have to stay at the EconoLodge. Alarming signs of the times, indeed! Well, take heart my dear friends. It just so happens this is probably just an indication of sold out rooms in plusher digs. It was the annual Corvette Show down in Cave City this past weekend. Who knew? Here's a great shot of one of the older beauties, taken the next morning:



Ben and I woke up early. We wake up early most days (though not so early for some people, I'm sure) to get to work on time. Unfortunately, we find more and more these days that this habit we've made dies hard on days even when we don't have work. Tragic. And since Kentucky is an hour earlier than we are (we're the last hanger's on to the East Coast time zone even though we're significantly far away from the coast) we found ourselves bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:30 am, rearing to go. We showered, got ourselves ready and went down to enjoy the free continental breakfast. I ate a bagel and Ben found his pancakes inedible, and the fruit juice was questionable, so we ended up doing less enjoying than we would have liked. We decided to supplement Ben's breakfast with McDonald's Egg McMuffins -- breakfast of champions.

And then off to Mammoth Cave! They had several tours starting early that we were excited to try out. We wanted to get there in plenty of time to get a ticket.

Ah, well, sometimes the best laid plans go to waste, and the not so well laid plans, well.... you can imagine. As it turns out the note at the bottom of the Mammoth Cave Website where it reads, "*Not available by reservation. Tickets can only be purchased the day of the tour at the visitor center," doesn't mean you can't buy tickets before. It just means the one tour on the list that has an asterisk of the 20 tours they have available can't be bought ahead of time. When we got there at 7:45, all the tours I had any interest in were sold out. I was devastated and, to be honest, totally ticked at their website information that was (in my humble opinion) misleading. I had driven 3 hours for this! All the good tours are gone!?!? Seriously?! I wanted to just turn around and go home. Ben, however, calmed me down just enough to buy a couple of tours worth of tickets to the less challenging, but still available. I was pretty certain I wasn't going to like them. But we were already there. And though I might not end up enjoying them, Ben might.

On our first cave tour, we had a nice small group of people and we were made aware of the reason for the Cave network's name. We already read on the website that the caves were the longest system in the world, with 360+ miles of caves inside. But the caves are not only extensive. Individually they're areas inside can be huge. The first room we were in was a 1/4 acre large. Here are a few cool pictures from our first tour:



Above is a picture of the "natural opening" to the cave. It's pretty huge.



When they were in the caves in the last 1700's, early 1800's they used it to mine saltpeter to make gun powder. You can see some of the equipment they brought down in this picture.





I think these two pictures above give you a good idea of how huge some parts of the inside of this cave are. Or they would if I could make them any larger. :)

Overall, aside from it's extensive and sometimes huge tunnels, there wasn't a whole lot more to see in this cave tour. Our guide, Bobby, reminded us that Mammmoth Cave is not famous for its stalactites, stalagmites or other amazing features in the cave. It is famous because of it's size. So there you go. We had all been made aware we could stop looking for more wonderment. And I found it relieving to know, despite the fact I wasn't in awe of the cave's beauty, I also "shouldn't" be in awe of it.

After this two hour tour, Ben managed to get me to go back for one more, through another area of the cave. I was trying to raise my spirits up to be enjoyable company, but I did a pretty crappy job, if I do say so myself. It wasn't terrible, but I'd say it may have potentially ben slightly reminiscent of pulling teeth for me.:) For a lot of the tour I just didn't say anything, so to minimize the negativity that might come out of my mouth. If you can't say something nice....

Looking back, I think I should have known I wouldn't like this very much. I don't know what I was thinking with all these guided tours. I don't even like being guided through aerobics class. And on our second tour, our group was so large that I felt like I was in a never-ending line for a ride at Disneyland, with the tour group of over 140 people. Only with cave tours, the line IS the ride. I'm used to caving where you get "down and dirty" and have to twist yourself into funny shapes so you can get out. I came out clean as a whistle from these two tours and I think I might have had to duck my head and shift my hips a couple times. Somehow, not quite the same effect.

Not to say it was all a waste. Or painful. On the bright side, The second tour ended up having some of the coolest formations we'd seen and 80% of the formations there are to see at Mammoth Cave (jackpot, I guess). Here are a few pictures of what they call Frozen Niagara:





Our pictures don't do this feature justice. It was much cooler in real life. One part of the tours I enjoyed (yes, I did end up enjoying at least one part. Maybe two.. I'll have to think about it) was a little bit of comic relief in the naming of various parts of the caves. For example, they had an area in one of the caves where they had installed toilets. The called this area the "The Great Hall of Relief". Below is a picture of an area they like to call "Fat Man's Misery."



He he he he. They make me laugh.



And here is a shot of how they would "smoke" their names into the ceiling. I checked one of the covers on the lights they had in the cave to see if the names weren't on the cover of the light instead of actually smoked onto the ceiling (so, I can be a little bit of a skeptic sometimes..). I got in trouble for that. You can't stray too far from the tour, apparently. Woops. I like getting into trouble sometimes.:)

I complained to Ben a couple times how we were doing family friendly vacations and we weren't even a whole family yet (meaning we have no children). He was a bit surprised I didn't like this activity as much as I didn't like it when I had honestly told him before that I had a good time at Mt. Rushmore, which is also very kid-friendly. I reminded him that when I went to Mt. Rushmore I WAS there with children -- my niece and nephews. See, if you take your kids to they little, shallow wave pool, you can very well have fun with them there. But you don't usually see a lot of adults hanging out by the little, shallow wave pool of their own volition, do you? No-- because it's not as fun to do kid stuff without the kids, in my opinion. And I was banished to the kiddie tours without having any kiddies. And I just didn't like it very much.

This, aside from a much anticipated, luxurious dinner, was the big event to celebrate Ben's and my 1st anniversary. I spent the activity sulking and complaining (with mild signs of amusement at times) while Ben tried to pacify me and enjoy himself. Sometimes, the best laid plans... you get the idea. Let's hope this isn't some foreshadowing of the eternity that awaits us. I think the celebratory event was very non-reflective of the year that preceded it, thankfully. And just maybe, next year, instead of the outdoors, I'm gonna suggest we check in at the Four Seasons and go on a shopping spree. I think that would be sure to elicit better moods from me. :)