Happy first day of fall. What a surprise we got this morning – cool temperatures in upper 60s! It is a top down travel day, finally. As we traveled the short distance to Mammoth Cave, Peggy noticed some falling leaves and a hint of color change in a few of the trees. There is also a definite change in the landscape and vegetation with lots of green space and tall deciduous trees.
After weeks of temperatures in the 90s – low 100s (with the exception of 2 days in Arizona, of all places), today was a refreshing change. Even Peggy was happy to see cooler temperatures. The last time she said she was happy to see cooler temperatures was when we were on a trip to Florida in July. We had to put the top up and turn on the air-conditioning then too.
Mammoth Caves National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is believed to be the longest cave system in the world and has many cave tours to offer. Our focus for this trip is a cave tour. We drove directly to the Visitor Center and were able to get reservations for the 2:45 p.m. Historic Tour. Since we had almost 2 hours to wait, we secured lodging here in the park and then grabbed a bite to eat. Our tour was very interesting, and as the name implies, it focused on the history of the caves. There is evidence of humans from thousands of years ago. There are 426 miles of caves. The topography and geology of the area make it very conducive for both caves and sink holes to develop.
It was interesting to compare Mammoth Cave to Carlsbad Caverns. Mammoth Cave is a much larger cave system of which 400 miles of caves have been explored with much more remaining. There are many more caves at Mammoth than at Carlsbad, but the individual caves are much smaller than those at Carlsbad which has caverns that are hundreds of feet from floor to ceiling. (The Big Room at Carlsbad is 255 ft. high, 625 feet wide and 4,000 feet long.)
In the more recent history, salt peter was mined during the War of 1812. After the war, the mines ceased operation. We walked past some of the old salt peter pits where the rock was mixed with water into sluice and then the sluice was transported above ground in hollowed out poplar tree trunks. The slaves who worked in the mines became guides for exploring the caves. The first guided tour was in 1816. The National Parks opened their first tour in July 1941.
On the Historic Tour, there are very few stalactites and stalagmites. However. there are some interesting limestone rock formations. We crossed the bottomless pit which is actually 105 feet deep with a sand bottom. We also went through Fat Man’s Misery, ” a winding, keyhole passageway”. It is appropriately named. The space is barely 18 inches wide at hip level with many areas only a 12 inch width for feet. We also needed to bend our heads in places. It was well worth the trip. (Peggy and her sister Pat remember traveling that path in 1970 when they were both pregnant!) It was well worth the tour – all 2 miles and 540 steps.
After our tour, we picked up our room key and went to dinner at the Watermill Restaurant in Cave City. Since the salad bar looked so good and had many selections, we opted for that rather than ordering off the menu. Everything was delicious. We headed back to the park and our room. It was very comfortable but the name of our section of rooms, Sunset Terrace, was very misleading. There was no view of the sunset. We settled in, caught up on some emails and read our stories before lights out.
