Mammoth Cave

My quads are sore.

I'm off Tuesdays and Kurt wasn't working, so we decided to take a day trip to Mammoth Cave Nat'l Park. It's not a busy time of year so unlike Dixie's trip there, they weren't taking reservations for the tours. They just said they were running three different routes and to come on, so we did.

Not sure how to describe it, other than to say it's amazing. The area is limestone and the caves were carved out of millions of years of water flowing underground. The lower levels we went to were dry, rocky caverns while the levels closer to the surface are drippy and have some amazing formations.

We went on a tour that takes about two hours. Not a tour for the claustrophobic. It starts at an entry that was blasted in 1921, when the cave was a private cave-tour site. The initial drop winds down through some tight wet spaces. It's dimly lit so as not to grow algae and plants where they don't belong, but the handrails guide you. Some people, like my 6' 3" husband, had trouble with overhanging rocks, but I'm pretty short and didn't bang into anything.

There is a tour that goes through the original entry, from 1851. That one apparently takes you into giant caverns. Might try that one another time.

My camera battery was dead, but I found a nice photo on line.