05-07-13 07:41 AM

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Singelli

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So I thought I could get some of your guys' attention with that title. After all, it's a gaming site, right?

So this weekend, my husband surprised me with a lovely trip to Mammoth Caves, Kentucky. Have any of you been there before? Mammoth Caves is the third cave I've visited and toured, and I've got to say it's my favorite. I -love- the outdoors, and while some of you may argue that the inside of a cave doesn't fall into that category, I'll just say that I still love to visit them. There's something majestic and amazing about these giant holes in the ground, supported only by their own architecture and oftentimes filled with history.

The tourist industry actually offers at least 9 tours of the caves, which isn't surprising. Even though they aren't completely explored, there are 400+ known miles of trail which lie over and around each other like a bowl of spaghetti noodles. Jason and I went on two of those tours, each 2 hours long: The New Entrance Tour, and The Historic Tour. I personally want to return and go on The Wild Cave Tour, which is 6.5 hours long and requires caving equipment! Those apparently sell out pretty fast though, so I'll have to plan ahead for that one.

Amazingly, the tours were actually very decently priced, too! Their tours range from $5 to $20, and the shortest tour is 1.5 hours long.

We didn't stay at the hotel on the premises and enjoyed two nights at The Courtyard (Marriott) about 45 minutes away in Bowling Greene. I've got to say this as well.... Bowling Greene is -beautiful-. Green, green, green everywhere! There are so many things to do as well, and I ended up walking away with 100+ tour flyers. Surprising? Well, it certainly was to me! Apparently all corvettes are made in Bowling Green, Kentucky.... and I guess that's where a lot of the money comes from. You can even go through the assembly plant to learn how Corvettes are assembled, if you want to.

Anyways, I wanted to share photos of this amazing place!

Here is Jason entering the new entrance. I trailed behind him for most of our tour, and as you can see, we're moving down steps. This first tour was 288 steps down into the darkness and very wet.

Apparently, this entrance is man made, and caused a lot of heated debate. Back when it was first opened (early 1900s, if my memory serves me right), there were five or six individually owned tours of Mammoth Cave. The guy that opened this entrance called it the new entrance to mammoth cave, which the other tours didn't like. He insisted that this cave did indeed connect to Mammoth, but nobody believed him, and there was a large court case over it. Well, the case ended by taking court officials on one of the Mammoth Cave tours. When they got down to a certain room, he met them (having come from 'his' entrance), and led them out through the entrance he had made... thus proving that the caves were connected.

The other tours weren't happy about this of course, because his cave entrance was right off the highway, and he quickly moved into the top spot for cave tours in that area. Also, many of the tourists were New York businessmen, so he named rooms and tunnels and passages by New York landmarks.

This was actually the New York Subway:

It's one of the man-made passages, and was about 5' tall.... just the right height for most people to have to stoop a little in order to move through.

Most of the cave looked more like this:

Surprisingly, most of Mammoth Caves is pretty dry, meaning that no formations are made. However, there is -one- spot in which water comes down, and this water has created what is known as "Frozen Niagara Falls". It's 40 feet wide and a little over 70 feet tall.

49 more steps below that is the drapery room. If you've ever been on a cave tour, drapes are rocks that looks like... drapes. LOL They're humongous and weigh a ton, but they're pretty impressive to look at. Unfortunately, it was little too dark in this little area to get decent pictures, but I tried!

I know the following picture doesn't look like much, but my little camera flash only goes so far! This hole went 100 or more feet down, and at the bottom of it was a huge river! There are apparently 4 rivers running down below most of the tunnels. Bout tours used to be given on them, but there is a type of shrimp which ONLY lives in this river. Since it's the only known place in the world that this species exists, conservation became important and tours on the river were removed as an option around the late 1900s.

There isn't much wildlife in the caves, but there were lots of cave crickets, and even bats! The temperature in the cave was amazing, and I didn't even need my jacket, as I thought I would. Below you can see the both of these enjoying the cool temperatures. Unfortunately, my photos came out quite blurry because I wasn't allowed to use my flash for either of these photos. You can even see the way the ranger only shone the light right next to the bat, and not on it. These bats were no taller than an average pinkie finger.

I didn't get as many photos for the historic entrance. Most of it consisted of monstrous passageways.... and when I say monstrous, I mean monstrous. I can't accurately estimate the measurements, but I'd say it was about 10 stories high and 10 stories wide. Even the natural mouth of Mammoth Caves is pretty large, though it's less than half the size of the tunnels.

The first room you come into is known as the Rotunda, and I was amazed by the perfectly circular indent in the ceiling. Sadly, it was far too large to be photographed in full with my camera, but I still took a few shots of it regardless.

Below this circular ceiling was a pit containing signs of labor. Apparently, back in 1812, these caves were 'mined' for something in the dirt. I want to say nitrate, but I honestly can't remember. Anyways, slaves would shovel dirt into these large wooden boxes which worked as sieves. Giant cedar trees were hollowed and joined together from the top of the cave ceiling, bringing water down into the boxes to wash through the dirt. My pictures of the large wooden boxes were too dark, but here you can at least see some of the cedar trees. Thanks to the dryness of the cave, most 'artifacts' are kept in near perfect condition for a much longer time than artifacts on the surface.

Here are a few more shots, leading up to the tunnel known as "fat man's misery". This includes another (and more successful) attempt at the underground river.

Fat man's misery was probably one of my favorite parts of Mammoth Cave. It was quite aptly named, and at parts no wider than 7 inches wide. This narrow portion didn't go any higher than the hips, however, so as long as your legs were thin enough, you could get through.

At some point, we were actually 360 feet (36 stories) underground. Of course, this means that we actually had to go back -up- 360 feet.... Luckily some of that was done through a vertical set of steel stairs. The exit was much closer to the waterfall and thus, we all got a little wet here. lol

Finally, I have to share a bit about the hotel room we stayed at, because it was so awesome. If you ever choose to travel to Bowling Greene, I'd -highly- suggest the Marriott we stayed at. The staff was amazing (and even made 100 copies of my classroom assignment for me), the amenities were spotless, and the room was beautiful. It even had a whirlpool tub, feet away from the bed! I only took pictures of the room as we were packing up and leaving, so forgive the mess and trash around the room.

Even the food from their in-house bistro was amazing. We had debated going out to eat, or staying in..... and we decided that we would have enjoyed the food much less had we gone out to eat. Here are just some peek shots at their menu..... we did try nearly everything between the two days, and every bit of it was absolutely fantastic.

I just wanted to share a bit about my trip, so I hope you enjoyed reading it! I left Kentucky at 3am and the drive back to Birmingham was a 5 hour trip, so I jumped right back into work after the drive. However, the trip was worth it, and I highly recommend that anyone gives it a shot.

Have you gone caving at all? How was your trip, and would you recommend it? I'd love to hear some of your stories!

P.S. Like my souvenir? ^.^

I also got a ranger hat and a pretty shirt, but I didn't take a picture of those. Maybe later if someone really wants to see them.