July 10 - Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

We (and by that I mean the queen’s we, because James slept in another 20 minutes longer than me…) woke up at 5:30 and left the campsite at 7:30 to begin our 7-hour drive to Kentucky. Mammoth Cave here we come! We arrived at 3:00. Not too bad. Pretty smooth sailing in the car. While traveling we saw some interesting sights on the Tennessee and Kentucky highways including a woman sitting in her bra in the back of a pickup truck which was going at least 70 (James thought this was a great place for the wife) and another scene - a farmer, in his denim overalls, scratching his head, explaining something to a state trooper. It seems while he was traveling, one of his cows slipped out the back and now stood, a little stunned, grazing along the side of the highway. We left North Carolina in the rain, drove through the beautiful Great Smoky Mountains and sunny skies to arrive at Mammoth Cave NP just in time to catch – you guessed it – another thunderstorm. The rain didn’t last too long and we got the campsite set up in record time (45 mins). We set off for the Mammoth Passage Tour that would show us the Narrows (long, wide hall), Rotunda (enormous room), and Large Trunk Passage. The Caves are truly colossal. We went in the ‘natural’ way through a hole in the earth (the Park Service had kindly built stairs for us to go down so we didn’t have to slide down the dirt and gravel hill). There was a beautiful trickle of water running over the top and down into the cave and everything around us on the hills was lush and green. Once we got to the bottom, we entered the Narrows, which led us to the Rotunda. No stalactites or stalagmites in this cave (which would help to preserve it the guide told us) just breathtaking views, which made me imagine what it must have been like to stumble upon these caves over a century ago. It was extremely chilly in the cave. There were vents at the entrance, which made the air above ground, feel air-conditioned. Our guide Keven, a National Park Service Ranger was extremely funny and informative. He had lots of interesting tidbits and facts to give us along the 1 hour and 15 minute tour (like that there are 365 miles of surveyed passageways and geologists think there may be another 600 miles of undiscovered passageways). After the tour we took a quick hike through the hills past Dixie Cave, which apparently is the home to several bats. Happily, they did not all come flying out on their evening run as we walked past!