Mammoth Cave National Park

 Good morning, my friends. We had a beautiful day for our visit to Mammoth Cave National Park.

There’s a McDonald’s just down the road from the RV park…also a Kroger. Heck you could get just about any kind of fast food you want just a hoop and a holler from where we are. From there, we asked our Nav unit to take us to the national park. Maybe it was feeling in a good mood because it took us on a nice scenic road off the main highway. We saw some barns along the way.

Now take a look at this next one. And what did we learn in Bardstown about barns that are black? That’s right. It’s mold that likes to grow around distilleries. Methinks there’s a hobbiest distiller living in the house associated with this barn. And, it makes sense if you think about it. There are plenty of small scale wineries, and certainly there are a lot of craft beer brewers out there. Why not bourbon? You can also see why this was known as “tattlemold” during Prohibition. If I can spot it, you know those revenuers wouldn’t have been fooled.

It’s very pretty here in Kentucky. It’s easy to see why it’s known as the “Bluegrass State.” It’s green…everywhere. And there is green, green grass growing everywhere too. It must take a small army to keep all the grass mowed. 

We were starting to doubt whether our nav unit knew where it was going when we got off onto a narrow road. We went quite a long distance through this dense forest before coming upon a sign directing us to the park. Turns out we came in through the west entrance, which was a little like coming in the back door.

We had e-tickets, but we were due a refund for being old fogies. All we had to do was show up with our ID and our geezer passes, and they gave us half off the tour we were signed up for. Nice. Things were behind glass here, and so it wasn’t possible to avoid reflections. You can read a description of our tour in the image below. And there were many tours we could have taken. They had me with the word “classic.” It seemed like a good place to start.

We were way early for our tour, and so we spent some time studying the exhibits in the visitor center. I took pictures of the descriptions of these two caves. These are caves Mike and I have seen.

This next image describes what we can expect to see in Mammoth Cave.

I did not know this but Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest cave…some 400+ miles!

The sign above and image below were together. Below is a metallic 3-D model of the cave system.

So we listened to Ranger Jake (who was very funny) as he told us about the journey we were about to take: 2 miles, some 400 feet of elevation loss and then regained; in other words, stairs, 540 steps at a minimum. And here’s where I thank my lucky stars that prednisone helped my hip, because there’s no way I could have done the tour three days ago. I did it yesterday with ease, and with no painful consequences. My hip is still pain-free. Honestly, I’m amazed.

Okay, so here we go down a long ramp to the cave opening. Our group is large at 110 people.

Now we’re descending some steps into the cave. We passed through a cooling breeze at the mouth of the cave. It felt good because it was warm and humid outside. You can see water running down the cave opening there. I don’t know if it runs year-round, but it was running a steady stream.

Inside at the first chamber, it looked like this:

We went down and down a ramp. At times it was low clearance, and we had to duck our heads to pass through.

Now, I want to post a few more signs from the visitor center. It will help you to understand my not-very-good pictures. Read them or don’t. As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a sign reader myself. Mike is my filter when it comes to signs. He tells me which ones I should read.

This one resonates with what we saw inside. It was like walking through a huge tunnel formed by rushing water.

This was one of the first places we stopped. It’s a little hard to see in this image, but those are log pipes. They have been hollowed out inside. They were used to mine saltpetre. It was used to make gunpowder, especially during the War of 1812. There’s a good article from the National Park Service about this.

It isn’t a highly-decorated cave. It’s just immense! In some areas we could barely scrape through, and then in others it was enormous, with deep, deep pits and tall, tall, towers.

The path was easy to follow and there were handrails where we needed them.

I loved this Bottomless Pit. The cave was first open for tours in 1816, and they didn’t know how deep this pit was. They couldn’t hear a rock hit the bottom, and they couldn’t drop anything burning. It would go out before hitting the bottom. As it turns out, it’s about 110 feet deep.

Here, I held my camera out over the hole a little more.

This was another funny passage: Fat Man’s Misery. It was very narrow, and also low clearance in some places.

You can see there’s only about 18 inches from side to side, and it’s shoulder-height on Mike. 

Also, it was very wet and drippy in this part of the cave. You can see Mike’s shirt has some drips on it. We were told those are “cave kisses,” when we visited Lewis & Clark Caverns in Montana a few years back.

In the image below, you can see how low the ceiling was in places. Look in the center of the image. The railing is waist-high, but you can see that the roof is only just a little higher.

There was modern graffiti in the cave too, but this was very old. We saw these kinds of markings when we visited Lehman Cave in Great Basin National Park. And look at that year! 1855!

Here I was looking at a towering wet wall. Water was running like a waterfall.

Here, I was looking up from the same spot. Essentially, we were standing in the middle of a long pit. It extended both above and below us.

This was taken near the same area.

The image below can give you some idea the scale here. Look at the very bottom of the image and in the middle, and you’ll see the path and railings where we would be walking. We went down a lot of stairs.

Our path took us in a loop, and we ended up at the opening where we first started. Now we’re on the inside looking out.

Mammoth Cave has been contaminated with white-nose syndrome in bats. It has wiped out about 90% of the bat population in the cave, which is very sad. Now, visitors to the cave must walk over these soft soapy mats as they leave. It prevents tracking the disease into other caves. Indeed, they were downright obsessive about this at Kartchner Caverns in Arizona. 

Apropos of nothing I could discern, these quilts were on display in the Visitor Center. No explanation their relationship to the cave. Look below the quilts for the sign that describes them.

And it was an excellent day. I got a refrigerator magnet…

AND a shot glass. Yay!

Smitty was darned good and ready to get out of the RV for a walk when we got back.

Sadie likes his walks from the catio. She gets excited when he goes out now because she knows it means treats of appeasement for her.

Smitty has discovered a delicious tuft of ornamental grass growing on the patio at our site. This is some purrimo weed.

And just about as quickly, he got too hot. It was warm and humid. I was happy he didn’t want to stay out long.

As we were getting ready for bed last night, this huge and LOUD rig pulled in beside us. It's a big motorhome towing a trailer with a car and a boat. How do you suppose he gets that boat off the trailer?

So it rained hard last night. We're expecting rain off and on for much of the day. It won't change our plans. We're going to the National Corvette Museum. Also, I have a quilt shop picked out. If memory serves, I haven't visited any quilt shops in Kentucky yet. There's also a brewery I'd like to visit if for no other reason than to get a t-shirt for Erik. It's a tradition. That will probably wait for tomorrow. There is also a historic section of downtown Bowling Green I'd like to see, but the weather may discourage us from that. It should improve tomorrow, and so we'll see how it goes.

Bowling Green, Kentucky

Good morning, my friends, and welcome to Bowling Green!

We're back on Central time, but only for the next four days. 

On Sunday, we'll head on over to Lexington, Kentucky, where we'll be back on Eastern time again. I'll leave it up to you whether you want to adjust your watches again. This part of the trip was supposed to have been done in a different order, which is why we're going back and forth a little bit. We had to rearrange to accommodate a tour to a horse ranch in Lexington. 

Before leaving Shepherdsville, we got Smitty out for one more walk. He's thinking this picture might be a good one for modeling his special fe-line of activewear.

While he was out, he snarfed down a little more of the Cattucky grass. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

We saw a few barns on our drive. It was a short drive...only 99 miles. The barns in this part of Kentucky are all hidden behind trees, and so I was only able to capture two.

The rest areas look for all the world like My Old Kentucky Home. Pretty fancy. They were very nice inside too.

These pretty red roses were growing along the sidewalk.

Did you know there are T-Rexes in Kentucky? Me neither.

There be dragons in Kentucky too. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

We passed by the National Corvette Museum on our way to our final destination. We'll be heading there today or tomorrow. Today we're touring Mammoth Cave. Our tour is early, and so depending on our energy level, we might take in the museum too. If not, then we'll see it tomorrow.

We stopped for lunch. We were a little ahead of time to check-in because of the time change. We decided to stop at a Subway, which just happened to be on...

Awwwwww...

So I looked up Bowling Green to see if it had any favorite sons or daughters. As it turns out, it's the birthplace of Duncan Hines! What?!? Get outta town! I thought Duncan Hines was a brand name! As it turns out, Duncan Hines was an actual person. He was a food critic and a cookbook author. Here's a picture of him from the Southern Living website.

Now that you know, you’ll never look at those cake boxes the same way again.

Speaking of food critics, I tried a new recipe for Roasted Chicken Thighs with Hot Honey and Lime. We had it with a side of steamed summer squash.

When I ask Mike to choose a vegetable in the grocery store, he always chooses summer squash. I slice it up, add some butter and garlic salt, cover the dish, and then microwave it. For these two zucchini and two yellow squash, it took 8 minutes in the microwave, stirring twice during that time. As for the chicken, here's the recipe.

It was so easy to do in the RV…just a few ingredients, and it was very tasty. I used the green Jalapeno Tabasco as my hot sauce. It had a nice flavor, but no heat, really. If you like more heat, you might like something stronger. My stomach can’t take that spicy food any more. It’s a NYTimes recipe, so I’m giving you a screen shot from my iPad. I think it will be easy enough to read. If not, you can always Email me and I can send it to you in a different format.

After we arrived in Bowling Green, Smitty bravely got out for another short walk. It was fairly noisy this afternoon, and so I was surprised at his courage. He wanted me to be sure and tell you that The Cat is definitely *not* a wuss. He would hate it if that rumor got started, and it might cause him problems getting modeling gigs with Cosmeowpolitan Magazine. I’m sure you understand. Mumm’s the word, okay?

Sadie enjoyed her afternoon on the catio. Mike and I have noticed that she goes into spasms of adorableness whenever anyone shows her the slightest bit of attention…which is often. Sometimes her adorable wriggling spasms cause her to roll off whatever surface she’s sitting on. At least she can’t fall out of the catio.

I’m writing a little bit fast this morning because we need to be on our way by 8:00 a.m., which seems to us, as retirees, a dreadfully early outing. We’ll console ourselves with our beloved Egg McMuffins before heading up to Mammoth Cave National Park. If I’m reading the website right, I’ll be able to take pictures inside the cave. Hopefully, I’ll have something to show you after we take the “Historic Tour.” 

I visited Mammoth Cave when I was a very little girl. I have almost no memories of it. Actually, the only memory I have of it is the decal that was on the window of our small travel trailer. I collect refrigerator magnets. My dad collected decals. One whole window and half of another was covered in decals, which made them kind of useless as windows. However, that collection of decals did leave me with my one memory of Mammoth Cave…until today. My dad and I did not see eye-to-eye on almost anything. But sometimes I see parts of the man that live on in me.