We had a leisurely wake up, Dick visited with a neighboring camper, Carol worked in the trailer and we had a late breakfast.
We headed for Mammoth Cave after noon and took the Historic Tour. This ranger led, introductory tour took us underground for 2 hours, traveled 2 miles and descended to 314 feet below the surface. It was quite a workout of climbing, squeezing and bending.
We expected the parking lot would be packed full, like yesterday. We arrived early and easily found a parking place. Then the light bulb went on ... Louisville is playing in an NCAA Final Four basketball game this afternoon. Duh!
The park offers many tour options. The Historic Tour was a great place to start, but didn't include the area that has stalactites and stalagmites. The cave is ... well, MAMMOTH! We've now visited Mammoth Cave, Carlsbad Caverns and Wind Cave. Carlsbad seems to have the most dramatic formations.
The following pictures are courtesy of the National Park Service.
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| Historic Entrance: With over 350 miles of explored passageways, Mammoth Cave is the world's largest cave system. The full extent of this water-formed labyrinth remains unknown, but Mammoth Cave is at least 3 times longer than any cave known. The park was established in 1941 to preserve this cave system and the beautiful landscape above it. |
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| The Historic Entrance continues on for about 250 feet into the cave system's "twilight zone." This huge opening is the largest natural entrance to the cave. |
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| The Rotunda is a large room located a short distance inside the Historic Entrance. Here, saltpeter was commercially mined for the making of gun powder prior to the War of 1812. |
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These pipes
made of tulip poplar logs carried water used in the extracting of nitrates from
the saltpeter found in the cave.
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This Bottomless Pit dome-pit is about 100
feet below trail level. When viewed from
the top, it gives the appearance of a never-ending vertical drop.
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The Bridal Altar is located in an
upper-level passage of the cave called Gothic Avenue. Many underground weddings occurred here
during the early 1900s.
(This wasn't on our tour.)
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Mary's Vineyard is found between the Snowball Room
and Boone Avenue. Its name comes from
numerous small cave formations resembling bunches of grapes.
(This wasn't on our tour.)
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| Mammoth Dome is a tall vertical shaft that can be viewed from many points along its length by climbing the tower of stairs within the dome. |
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The Ruins of Karnak, named for an Egyptian
temple, are part of the Mammoth Dome vertical shaft.
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Measuring 75
feet high, the Frozen Niagara
cascade is one of the largest flow-stone deposits in the cave system. This beautiful formation is made of calcium
carbonate that crystallizes out of very slow-dripping water.
(This wasn't on our tour.)
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| Onyx Chamber (This wasn't on our tour.) |
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| The Onyx Colonnade is a
series of columns and other formations of translucent, crystalline calcite.
(This wasn't on our tour.)
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We've camped near Horse Cave for the past two days and didn't know the Horse Cave story. Here's the short version ...
The city is best known for the large natural cave opening located on the south side of Main Street, from which the town's name is derived. As for the historical reason for the odd name, various legends are told. One has it that Native Americans historically hid horses in the cave. A similar tale is that an early carriage may have lost its horse to an accident, when the horse fell into the cave opening. Another, more likely, reason for the name is that the word horse was simply a 19th century adjective implying huge. The cave opening is large, and this is the most likely reason for the odd name. ("Hoss" is a Swedish word for "big in stature and big in spirit"; in the 19th Century, "Hoss", or "Horse", over time, became the Southern equivalent word, implying something that was huge or large.)
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