Diamond Caverns

     Travis and I had so much much visiting Mammoth Cave that we decided to make a second trip out to Cave City on Tuesday, to see some more caves. After all, there are LOTS of caves in the area. Several of them are privately owned, unlike Mammoth, which is part of the national parks. The first cave on our second day of cave tours was Diamond Caverns. 

     Unlike Mammoth, which is a dry cave system, Diamond Caverns are a living cave, which means they are a wet cave. Living means they are still growing. There are super strict rules about not touching the cave walls. The oils from our hands coat the limestone and stop the growth. And living caves are super cool. 

      There are areas of Diamond Caverns that have been explored a bit, but are not on the official tour, or able to safely be on a tour. I don't remember exactly where they are, but there is a part of the cave that takes about 6 hours to get into (a lot of wiggling and crawling apparently) but if it rains the passages can flood and fill in about 20 minutes. So those parts of the cavern have a lot of risk for not much reward. 

     Being a dry cave system, Mammoth Cave looks a lot different than Diamond Caverns. The walls in Mammoth are mostly flat, though there is a tour (which we will go on another time) that is a wetter part of the cave system and has smaller rooms with cooler formations. 

     Diamond Caverns has so many cool formations! I had a chat with our guide at one point (there were only 7 people on our tour, it was great!) and I told him about the other caverns I had been to. Not enough yet!

     At the end of our tour I told the guide that I think Diamond Caverns might be prettier than Howe Caverns (which is in New York). He was very pleased to hear that!

     Part of our tour, like most tours, was a bit of history of the cave and the discovery of it. I don't remember every bit of the story, but the original entrance was a small hole (which is in the current day ceiling of the caverns) where they lowered down a skinny teenager with a lamp. He looked around and the light glittered off the stones. So he yelled back that the cavern was full of diamonds (which it is not) and that is how it got the name, Diamond Caverns. 

     There were so many beautiful cave formations. Flowstone, stalactites and stalagmites. Columns (which form when the stalactites and stalagmites grow together), cave bacon (transparent bits of thin stone that look like bacon), and so many other cool things to see. 

     Being a wet cave, there was also a lot of water. And unlike Mammoth, which has a sandstone layer over the limestone, which keeps it dry, Diamond Caverns will rain inside, shortly after it rains outside. Though rain inside a cave is not the same as rain on the surface. Not that I wasn't constantly getting dripped on, I was. 

    These look like cave jelly-fish and they might be called that, I don't recall now. 

      Travis and I took a cave selfie that actually worked. Not all of them do. 

    Cave bacon

      There were plenty of dark, secret looking places in Diamond Caverns. They sort of made me a tiny bit nervous (well, not really, but maybe they should), since you never know what might be down in a cave (there are things living in living caves). Sometimes, if they are not tiny, they make me want to explore. I don't know how I would do with actual wild caving. I want to try it. I don't know if Travis would like it. 

      This is the wedding chapel, where many people have actually been married. The altar was made from stones from the cave. 

      This looked like some kind of dragon or monster to me. Big teeth anyway. Maybe a lizard. 

    There was a wall full of signatures

    Our guide, Stanton, was very knowledgeable about the signatures and could point out ones from the state you were from. And on a small tour, it was easy to ask everyone where they were from. This one is from Massachusetts. 

     A proper cave photo with Travis. I think I have a picture with at least Travis (at least a selfie) in every cave I have been in. Travis has been with me on all my cave tours (other than one I took when I was little). 

     Near the end of the tour, Stanton told us about a second exit that was starting to be built but abandoned. I don't remember when the construction started, though all that it is is a long staircase to nowhere. He said he had been up it once to change the lightbulb at the top of the steps. I don't currently remember why the project was abandoned, but it turns out it was a good thing. Surface weather can mess up the inside of a cave. Mammoth cave has a giant door, which is not actually to keep people out of the cave, but to keep the outside temperature and weather outside the cave. If Diamond Caverns had managed to finish the exit that was started, the airflow between the front and back entrance would have killed the cave!

         I took a lot of photos in Diamond Caverns, and spent the entire tour smiling like an idiot. Even though part of every cave tour is usually telling you how far you are underground, somehow that doesn't bother me. Sure, the idea of that amount of stone above me should probably make me nervous, but it doesn't. Giant boulders on the ground, that clearly were once part of the ceiling, don't bother me either. I don't know why. I do know that I find caves to be absolutely beautiful, fascinating places, and I want to see more of them!

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.