Carrizo Plain National Monument

Jill's Journal: There’s a mysterious, remote part of California that Kristi’s Adam took us to one day. The place – Carrizo Plain National Monument – never would have been a destination for us on our own and we’re so glad Adam encouraged us to go (and served as our tour guide). Featuring hundreds of miles of vast open space in an arid and almost treeless basin, Carrizo Plain spans well over 230,000 acres in the Southern San Joaquin Valley.

The Llano Estero, or salt marsh plain, has two main highlights. The first is Soda Lake, a prehistoric sea and one of the largest undisturbed alkali wetlands in the state. There’s no outlet, so water that pools during the rainy season in the winter eventually evaporates, leaving behind a 3,000-acre bed of white salt.

But even better is Painted Rock. The Bureau of Land Management allots passes for only 50 people each day (and only during certain times of the year) to visit the horseshoe-shaped sandstone, monolith rock. Rising 55 feet above the grasslands, Painted Rock was (and is) a sacred site for the Chumash and Yokut Indians. It’s considered one of the most important American Indian pictograph sites in the country. The Indian paintings were done over a long period of time, with some perhaps repainted over the years, but they are believed to range in age from 200 years old to an estimated 3,000 years old. They’re faded and being lost to the ravages of time and vandalism, but the girls so enjoyed spotting the pictographs and trying to figure out exactly what they meant. At the same rock, we also enjoyed catching nesting barn owls and seeing bedrock mortars used by the Native Americans to process seeds and nuts. Neat place.

Mammoth Cave

Jill's Journal: Somehow we’ve lived only a few hours from Mammoth Cave National Park for all these years and never went. Shameful. Why did we never realize what a natural wonder was such a short drive away?

First, the park itself – beautiful. Over 52,000 acres of lush vegetation and eye candy. Within our first three minutes in the park, we saw a deer and fawn on the side of the road, nearly hit a wild turkey crossing the road, and passed within inches of a vulture having a lunch of turtle. There are over 70 miles of horseback riding trails in the park – why did I not know this? I am kicking myself for never taking advantage of it before.

Regrets aside, Rob took off work a little early today to join us on an introductory tour of Mammoth Cave. I’ve been on other cave tours in different parts of the country and had never been wowed. Today, I was wowed. Seriously wowed. Phenomenal.

Mammoth Cave (the picture is of the entrance) is over 365 miles long and geologists believe there are approximately 500 more miles waiting to be discovered. It’s the longest known cave in the world and is designated as a World Heritage Site. And it’s not just long (and wide), it’s tall too. At one point, in an area of the cave known as the Rotunda, I asked the ranger how high the “ceiling” was because it just seemed so…mammoth. The answer? Eighty feet. Amazing. We were approximately 150 feet underground at that spot.

Mummies and artifacts found deep in the cave (approximately seven miles in!) show that Native Americans mined gypsum from the walls as long as 2,400 years ago. More recently, it was used as a saltpeter mine for U.S. forces during the War of 1812. Saltpeter is a key component of gunpowder and became a necessity when the British blockaded U.S. ports. Much original mining equipment from that effort nearly 200 years ago remains – including some of the innovative water piping of the time. Miners hollowed out yellow poplar trees (Kentucky’s official state tree) and banded them together to create an impressive system of pipes.

After the War of 1812 was over, the U.S. didn’t have such a need for saltpeter and the mine was shut down. Someone realized what a spectacular cave it was and decided to try the tourist thing in 1816. Mammoth Cave has been open to the public ever since, making it the second-oldest tourism destination in the 50 states (behind only Niagara Falls). The first hotel was built at the site in 1837 and it became a National Park in 1926.

The cave remains at 56 degrees year-round, which felt awfully chilly compared to the sweltering conditions outside. Unfortunately, the girls found the whole experience pretty boring, with one grand exception: the ranger wanted to show us how dark it is inside a cave, so he killed all the power. Trust me, there is no dark on the surface of the earth that compares. You could literally hold your hand a centimeter from your face and not be able to see it. There was, however, one tiny thing we could see – two of the girls had on a glow-in-the-dark silly bandz (a rubberband/bracelet fad of the moment). Those little rubberbands dimly glowed on those little wrists and completely cracked us all up!