Going Underground

When I was planning out our travel itinerary, I asked M to research the cave tours at Mammoth Cave National Park and pick out the ones that looked interesting. In no time at all, he handed me the names of the tours that he wanted to do. Now, it's really not that hard to come up with a short list when your sole criterion is the word "strenuous" in the description of difficulty! Thanks for taking your not-as-young-as-we-used-to-be parents into consideration, son!

Waiting for the Grand Avenue Tour to start

Two of the tours he picked weren't feasible because we don't have ankle-high hiking boots. Either one would have been fun to do since both involved real spelunking - climbing, crawling, etc. Instead, I bought advance tickets online for the other two on his list... the "very strenuous" Grand Avenue Tour in the morning and the plain ol' "strenuous" Violet City Lantern Tour in the afternoon.

We started off this morning with a breakfast of baked goodies my mom had sent along with us. Then we set off from our room for the very short trip across the parking lot and through the hotel lobby to the visitor center. M and J started working on the (very easy) Junior Ranger booklet, while I checked in to get our tickets. I'm glad we made our reservations way in advance because all of the tours M had picked were sold out today.

At 9:00AM, the rangers met our group outside and gave us the mandatory safety spiel. Then two buses shuttled all of us over to the Carmichael Entrance from the visitor center.

Grand Avenue Tour:  Carmichael Entrance to Frozen Niagara Entrance (4 miles)
Violet City Lantern Tour:  Historic Entrance to Violet City Entrance (3 miles)

The Grand Avenue tour lasted about 4 hours and covered 4 miles of passageways through Mammoth Cave. We never retraced any part of the trail and exited the cave at the Frozen Niagara Entrance. Afterwards we all had to walk across bio-security (i.e. soapy) mats to remove any fungal spores from our shoes to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome, which is deadly to bats.

My lens is not the best for low light, but here are a few photos from the tour route...

Grand Avenue

We were surprised to find a dining area in the cave!

Frozen Niagara

So, was it "very strenuous?" The boys didn't think it was strenuous at all. I was very appreciative of the benches thoughtfully located after the uphill climbs. And let's just say that R somehow tweaked his knee and leave it at that.

By now it was after 1:00PM, and we were all famished! We devoured our lunch in the Mammoth Cave Hotel dining room, and then we all got ready to go underground again for another 3-hour tour.

Well, make that just three of us. On our walk down to the Historic Entrance from the visitor center, R decided not to push it with his sore knee and skipped the 2:30PM Violet City Lantern Tour. Our only light on this tour was from oil lanterns - M got to carry one! We were able to see remnants of a saltpeter mining operation, as well as a tuberculosis sanitarium inside the cave.

We covered ~3 miles from the Historic Entrance to the Violet City Entrance, again without any backtracking. I think this tour was a little harder than Grand Avenue because the lanterns did not provide much light. It's so much more tiring to hike in the dark!

The 7 miles we toured today are only a small fraction of the more than 400 miles explored in the world's longest known cave system! No wonder Mammoth Cave has also been designated as a World Heritage Site!

The only time I had enough light for pictures on the whole tour!