Mammoth Cave

When we visited Carlsbad Caverns last year, Carl had told me that his favorite cave was Mammoth Cave... but that was before he visited Carlsbad. Carlsbad took first place in Carl's estimation. I had never been to Mammoth Cave, and since there is a Thousand Trails campground nearby, we decided to book that for part of our stay in Kentucky. We had enjoyed our ranger tour within Carlsbad, so we booked a tour for Mammoth Cave as well...

After we got parked in the lot, we headed toward the Visitor Center to check in for our tour -- Carl was going to take a picture of the sign, but as we neared it, he recognized a family that was heading toward the sign to take their picture as well -- a couple who were in Riverside Church when Sue and he were there -- and Carl and Gary were co-Awana leaders for the 3rd-6th grade boys! (Sue and Dawn were also Awana leaders but Carl doesn't remember if they were in the same class or not.)

They took our picture at the Visitor Center sign.

Gary and Dawn were there with their grown children, so their daughter took a picture of Gary and Dawn with us at the sign.

We were signed up for a different tour than Gary and Dawn, so we didn't have much time to visit, but we got to share with each other for about 15 minutes before we had to go our separate ways. 

We had signed up for the Extended Historic Tour that was leaving at 8:45am. They have quite a number of tours available!

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We met up with the others on our tour outside the Visitor Center where our guide gave us cautions about the tour.

We walked down to the historic entrance to the cave.

We had two rangers with our tour -- one in the front to guide and who talked with us at various spots in the cave, and the other followed behind to ensure no one got lost or left behind.

Heading down to the entrance of the cave

I learned from the pictures from Carlsbad Caverns that pictures inside caves don't give you much perspective of what it is like... but, nevertheless, here are a few pictures...

Coming down into one of the larger rooms in the cave

Different from Carlsbad, this cave was used commercially -- we saw a number of structures associated with the mining of saltpeter (used in the production of gun powder).

One of the owners of the cave, hearing people reporting that they felt better after visiting the cave, established a test to house tuberculosis patients in the cave in hopes that it might provide a curative effect.

One of the dwellings built to house tuberculosis patients

Ultimately, unfortunately, the environment was not helpful to the patients (more information here: https://www.nps.gov/articles/tuberculosis-mammoth-cave.htm).

We continued our tour -- heading deeper (lower) into the cave...

Looking down into one of the deep areas next to our path

Some areas were low requiring us to duck

Down additional stairways

Warning sign: "Fat Man's Misery"

Yep, it is getting kind of narrow! At least above waist high it was not too tight...

And then it became "Tall Man's Misery" (I'm not sure that's a very flattering picture of Carl's wife!)

Along the route, we saw many examples of "historical" graffiti. Early visitors (pre-national park days) were encouraged by their guides to leave marks of their visit.

We got to the lowest part on our visit and were able to sit and rest for a few minutes. Our guide told us that the river that performed much of the carving of this cave was not too far away, and within the past few months it had flooded into that area of the cave to the point that the room where we were sitting was completely underwater.

From there, we had 540 steps to make it back up to the surface... a large part of that was in "The Tower" where many steps had been constructed so we did not have to return through the tall man's and the fat man's miseries.

Just before we started up, we saw this which included the sound of a waterfall (though we honestly didn't see the water falling).

In this area of the cave was also the only place that we saw anything like stalactites and stalagmites -- we should have asked why they were here and nowhere else in the cave -- I am certain based on the composition of the rocks that the water was leaching through.

Since we had been chatting with Gary and Dawn before our tour, we had not visited the exhibits in the Visitor Center -- we think it may be a bit more interesting seeing the exhibits *after* our tour...

Mammoth is mammoth in its length (it doesn't have the biggest chambers -- I think they said that Carlsbad has that).

This was a model of many of the passages within Mammoth Cave -- it probably is not as neat to see in a picture as it was in 3-D as we could see how passages were in the same area under the ground but separated vertically from one another.

This one is hard to see, but in the red letters it displays how many miles are currently mapped -- 426 miles as of September, 2022. The ranger who guided our tour indicated that they are anticipating a new number to be released soon. There were a number of interesting videos and displays about the process of exploration and mapping and the various types of animals (fish, insects) that live in the cave (many have no eyes).

I was glad to get to see this cave that Carl had enjoyed so much when he was a boy (in the 1960s) and with his family in the 1990s. And it was a special blessing to get to meet Gary and Dawn there!