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!

Lost River Valley and Cave…and Waterslide of Death

Jill's Journal: It is hot. Really hot. The massive heat wave on the East Coast must have spread this way, because triple-digit temperatures in Kentucky just don’t happen very often. It was 104 degrees today, confirmed on both our car’s thermometer and the local bank temperature sign we drove by. I grew up in the California desert and then spent four years in Phoenix, so 104 normally wouldn’t phase me (that would be a cool summer day in Phoenix!)…but when that 104 degrees has what feels like 5,000% humidity attached, it’s a whole ‘nother level of brutality. Even the pool offers no relief – the water is so hot it feels like you’ve just jumped into a giant boiling pot of water while simultaneously being baked under the sun.

Being the savvy traveler that I am or maybe just lucky, I scheduled a cave visit for today (since we are in cave country and caves are generally pretty cool in temperature year-round). We made the trek to the Lost River Cave, which one can only enter by boat. I’m not a big cave fan, although I’ve been to probably a half-dozen in my life, but thought the girls might get a kick out of both the cave and the boat.

The beautiful valley surrounding the cave was originally part of the cave itself, but many, many moons ago, a massive cave collapse turned the area into a valley of lush vegetation and four spectacular blue holes (where the underground river escapes to the top). We hiked to a butterfly habitat and the girls absolutely loved chasing butterflies. One landed on Madelyn (see it on her shoulder in the picture?), much to her sisters’ envy, and we spent five minutes “oohing” and “aahing” over the fancy insect.

One of the blue holes in particular was a source of great mystery. As Confederates were marching through during the Civil War, a horse carrying a supply wagon spooked and tumbled into the blue hole. Within seconds, the wagon, horse, and driver completely disappeared and fellow soldiers found no sign of them after diving in. Shortly after, Union troops had a similar experience – several soldiers jumped in for a refreshing swim and one by one started disappearing. The spot began to be known as the bottomless blue hole and it was thought a Native American curse covered the place.

As other people were lost over the years to the bottomless blue hole, yet no bodies were ever recovered from the outwardly peaceful water, an engineer eventually decided to get to the bottom of things. He threw in a rope with a rock on the end to find the bottom. He kept having to tie on more and more ropes, but finally measured the depth as an astounding 437 feet. The length of the blue hole is only 400 feet. The notoriety of the place grew and Ripley’s Believe It or Not came to validate the measurements, pronouncing it the “shortest and deepest river in the world.”

As technology advanced, the place became a novelty and was studied extensively. Eventually, it was discovered the serene blue hole with no outwardly visible hint of moving water was not 437 feet deep, but a mere 15 feet deep! However, it was finally learned that a treacherous underwater current lies near the bottom and sweeps anything in its path into an underground cave river.

We left the mysterious blue hole and hiked to the cave entrance, one of the largest cave entrances east of the Mississippi River. The entrance is so big that it was turned into the very unique “Cavern Nite Club” in 1934 and existed as a big band nightclub into the 1960s. The original bar, dance floor, and stage all still exist and are of course naturally air-conditioned by the cave. I wonder how many dancers took one wrong step or how many patrons had one too many drinks and plummeted down into one of the cave crevices or into the cave river?

A boat was waiting to take us into the cave itself and the cave roof at some points is so low that the boat riders have to crouch down in the boat. Erika and Victoria thought that was pretty neat, but Madelyn was highly unimpressed. “I do not like this, Mommy!” Luckily, she hung tough and later enjoyed seeing the wall/rock formations. Part of the underground river was dammed off for a water-powered mill before the days of electricity and that was neat to see too.

Jesse James seems to be a recurring theme this week and we saw where he hid out in 1868 after robbing a local bank. Law enforcement waited outside for three days to capture him and never succeeded. He also kidnapped a local physician to care for a wounded comrade in the cave and still avoided capture!

After our cave experience, we headed back to the campground where Rob happily joined us on the 300-foot waterslide, which we have now dubbed the “waterslide of death.” Erika went another three times and still loves it. Madelyn went again, got turned around backward, and even though Rob caught her at the bottom, she was scared enough to renounce the whole thing. Victoria was ready to go, was literally sitting on the mat at the top of the slide, when she changed her mind. Rob and I were so delighted with this – in spite of reassurances from the park staff, we felt she was just too young and although she may rule the world someday with that attitude, she isn’t a daredevil. Rob gave it a try himself and nearly drowned – small kids float down, but adults with their bigger body frames get plunged into abuse. He insisted I try and I did, against my better judgment. As I got flung around from side to side with my feet and lower legs being tossed over the top edges of the slide, I was certain I was going to die! I later heard only one person has ever been thrown from the slide. I’m still thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t the second!

Rob made it up to me by making us all a fabulous dinner on his new grill for the second night in a row. He does such a good job that I believe he should permanently take over cooking duties…he would have had to anyway if he’d lost his wife on that miserable slide!