Mammoth Cave

       Three years ago, we finally got to go to Kentucky to attend Horsefest. It was great, and when I learned about Mammoth Cave being so close, I really wanted to go. But Cave City is a little over 2 hours from Lexington, so I would really need to plan that in ahead of time. So I planned for us to go last year. Instead, American Airlines stranded us in Philadelphia. So we didn’t get to go to Mammoth Cave. Again. But this year, we finally made it!

       I try to remember to take a lot of selfies with Travis while we travel. It’s part of what we do. This one was right outside the cave.

     The day was very hot and humid, but once you got close to the entrance, it felt like there was air conditioning in the woods. That was really cool (no pun intended)! The entrance reminded me a bit of the entrance to Natural Bridge Cavern, in San Antonio. At least in how you get into the cave. 

     There was a bit of a waterfall at the entrance, which was very hard to photograph. Especially with a phone. 

     There is no flash photography allowed in the cave, so I did the best I could to get pics of Travis. There are so many lights in the cave that getting photos wasn’t too hard. 

      Mammoth Cave is a dry cave. And it was very cool. For awhile, we kept our sweatshirts on, because it’s only around 50 degrees inside. But after a lot of walking, 50 degrees wasn’t horrible. 

      The cave was really nice, but I haven’t seen a cave I don’t like.

     Mammoth used to be used for mining salt peter, and a lot of the old equipment is still in the cave. 

     There were lots of deep crevices tucked under the walls. It was pretty cool. Sometimes I wished we could explore off the paved path. 

         There were plenty of very large rooms in the cave. 

      There was also plenty of cave graffiti. I have no idea why I find that cool. If the signatures were added up to 1941, the are considered historic. If they are 1942 or later, they are a felony. 

     This looked like a black bear to me. 

      At one point, our guide lit a lantern and turned off the lights. Then she (warned us) and blew out the lantern so we could see the absolute dark of the cave. There were more than 100 cell phones on that tour, and lots of Apple Watches, so we still had bits of light from lit up screens. 

      Somewhere on this wall is a felony signature. 

     Going down these stairs you really had to watch your head. It’s kind of hard to tell from the angle of the photo though. 

   Felony. 

       Kind of a deep crevice. I had to really force myself to take this photo. I am very afraid of heights. 

    More head smashing stairs. 

     This part of the cave was called tall man’s torment I believe. 

    More dark spaces I wished I could go and explore. 

    A really narrow section of the cave where we had to kind of shimmy through sideways. 

     Some beautiful flow stone. 

      The kind of scary fire tower stairs. I just looked up as we were going up them. It made it so I could do it. 

     Another selfie. This one barely worked, but I can still see Travis’s smile. 

     The exit, back into the humid woods. 

    I am very glad we finally made it to Mammoth Cave. This was only one of the tours, and there are many. I think we might have to go back and do another one next year.