Cave Recap

It is now Wednesday July 18, 08:38 eastern daylight time.  We are currently camped at My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown Kentucky.  This is the place where Stephen Foster was when he wrote My Old Kentucky Home. I don't know if he was living here or had just happened to be here, or what. The informative part of the park is closed, so we'll just have to save that little mystery for the next time that I'm in the area. There really isn't very much to say about today just yet, so let's roll the clock back about 24 hours, shall we?

We camped in the national park campground on Monday night and although we were back on the ground after about a 5 day hiatus, we both agreed that it was a very peaceful and restful night, in spite of some tossing and turning.  That's probably because there was no traffic noise.  The bugs, however, were very loud - possibly the loudest cacophony of bugs that I have ever experienced - but they belonged and somehow added to the tranquility in spite of the din.

Yesterday's main event was, of course, our second cave tour.  This one was the Grand Avenue tour.  This tour went into the cave through a different entrance than the one we had been through the day before.  In fact the entrance that we used was completely artificial.  I can't adequately describe the interior of the cave for you, except to say that it is huge.  It's not that the passageways or rooms are all so very enormous, although some of them are rather large, but the cave has over 400 miles of mapped passageways and tunnels!  The guide mentioned on more than one occasion that Mammoth Cave is the largest (or longest) cave in the world in that respect.  It seems to me that I read an article in National Geographic Magazine some time ago, perhaps five years, that was about a cave somewhere in Mexico or Central America that is even longer, I don't recall for certain, but suffice to say that Mammoth Cave is very, very large.

We spent 4 hours in the cave yesterday and walked more than 4 miles.  We saw less than 1% of the cave.  Our trails yesterday ranged from level, cement sidewalk to sloped, hard-packed dirt & rock aggregate.  When the inclines got too steep, we walked on stairs.  And the entire length of our walk was illuminated by electric lights; dim, but quite adequate to stay on the well maintained paths.  The cave began to be explored in earnest about 200 years ago.  One name that was frequently mentioned was Stephen Bishop.  Bishop was a slave who did more exploration and mapping of the cave than any other individual, and apparently he did much of his exploring alone.  As we were walking through the cave at a moderate stroll, I was impressed by how extensive the passages are, and by how much effort it must have been to explore and map these passages in pitch darkness with the light of just a single flame from a lamp burning chicken fat, all the while having to climb over rocks and boulders.  Being able to walk literally miles through the cave was impressive.  Knowing that there were men like Stephen Bishop and others, who spent years clambering through the darkness to find and map its deepest recesses made it all the more impressive.

Mammoth Cave was a side trip well worth the taking even if it meant cheating on the cycling aspect of the journey. Today it's on Ohio so that my cousin Tom H and his lovely wife Nancy may have a visit from their favorite cousin and his son. We really are too kind - just kidding. But first, it's off to a bike shop in Louisville in search of an offset seatpost.