Day 13- Rest Day in Cave City, KY

Rest Day! Time to take it easy, recharge, get gear ready for the next 6 days of riding, and generally enjoy spending time together. That’s the plan at least. However, we’re staying in a place called “Cave City” and I’m not really a fan of small spaces or heights. You can probably guess how at least part of this “rest day” went.

We got up early and headed up the road to Mammoth Cave National Park. For those that don’t know, Mammoth Cave is aptly named. It is the largest cave system in the world with over 400 miles of caves currently mapped out. We’ve done some cavern tours in the last few years including Skyline and Luray so I figured we were ready for whatever Mammoth could throw at us. The park has a number of different tours available, and most are available for online reservation the day before. The one tour we wanted (about 60 steps, .75 miles, and 1.5 hours) couldn’t be reserved online for some reason. So we decided to get to the park early and get the tickets for the tour we wanted.

Well, that didn’t work. The tour was sold out 30 minutes before it started, so we had to choose a new tour. I ask about the New Entrance Tour. It was 290 steps, 1 mile and 2 hours long. Definitely more steps but really, we’re all in shape… how hard could it be? I tell the woman at the ticket booth we have a 2 year old in our party and asked if it would be reasonable for him… “oh yeah. People take kids on this tour all the time… I think. At least, I’ve heard they do.”  So I got the tickets and we went to the pavilion to wait for the bus to pick us up for the start of the tour.

We get on the bus and drive about a mile to a trail. There’s about 30 of us in this tour… apparently they’ll take up to 120 on this particular tour. I seriously can’t even imagine this event with 4x the people. We walk down the trail in to an old sink hole. At the bottom there is a steel door built in to the embankment. Not a huge, cavern sized door mind you. A freaking steel door the size of a normal bedroom door. However this door isn’t giving you privacy while you’re warm and snuggly in your soft bed. It’s protecting people from wandering in to a little tiny hole in the ground that leads hundreds of feet in to the darkness.

There are two rangers who work the tours. One leads the tour and tells the group all about the cave and its history. The other ranger stays at the back of the pack and makes sure people don’t fall off the tour, get lost, and parish in the dank, cold, dark pit that we all paid money to enter.

A word about the New Entrance to Mammoth Cave. It’s not a natural entrance. It was created during the Great Kentucky Cave Wars (not kidding, this is a thing we learned about) when folk were competing to lure in the most tourists to their caves. A gentleman named George Morrison bought some land near Mammoth Cave, figured out where the cave went under his land, and then blasted a hole in the ground to get down in to the cave system thereby creating a New Entrance. If I could go back in time and talk to Mr. Morrison, my conversation would with him would be simple:

Please, for the love of all that’s holy, blast a bigger hole in the ground.

The Ranger opens the door, and we are greeted by a flight of metal stairs that goes swiftly down in to a dark, rocky, narrow passageway. This is not the kind of passageway that you think “oh, this is a perfect place for my 2 year old”. This is the kind of passage where if your 2 year old would get within 20 feet, you’d tackle them to the ground to keep them from falling in. But this is a Tour… so we were committed. Heidi picked up Dax, and we all headed down in to the darkness with the rest of the group.

After the first couple “flights” of stairs, Heidi was really struggling with Dax. He wanted to get down and was being a bit difficult. She had all the camera gear and her purse and could barely fit through the passage in parts. Seriously, this passage is so narrow and low in spots that Heidi (at just over 5′) was having problems maneuvering. So I took Dax and continued down the stairs so she could focus on the rest of the stuff.

It’s hard to overstate how steep and wet these stairs were. Also, off to the sides of the stairs you can sometimes get a glimpse of how far down they go… literally 100’s of feet. In a passage so narrow I was having to squeeze through with Dax, we willingly descended in to the darkness. I’ll spare you the details of every twist and turn, but it’s safe to say I had a death grip on Dax and it was a hell of a workout to get to the “bottom.”

Once at the bottom, the cave was actually pretty impressive. Very different formations than the other caverns we’ve been in and obviously part of a very complex system. Also, only about 4′ of the entire tour was actually friendly to 2 year olds. The rest of it, I was a basket case. Thankfully Heidi is way calmer in these situations than I am. She held Dax through the rest of the tour and he did very well. And the other boys had a blast. I think I’m the big wimp of the family.

It was dark in the cave (shocker) and we didn’t bring a very fast lens. Heidi asked at the end “Did you get any pictures?” “A couple,” I said. Turns out, 2. That’s exactly how many I got. Here’s the good one.

Also, there were turkeys all over the park. As they said on a sign at the visitor center, since they’re protected in the Park, they’re not on the menu in the cafe.

JP and Art had a very productive rest day. The new strut was delivered to the dealer early in the morning and they were on their way back to join us by 10:30. Pretty amazing. Plus Art had trip interruption coverage on his warranty so the hotel, transportation, and all their food was paid for while they were dealing with the car. Not bad. So JP will be riding again early tomorrow once we get back underway. w00t.

It turns out we’re pretty close to Nashville. And as it turns out, we know some folks in Nashville. JP pinged SkyDog and Robin to see if they wanted to meet up for dinner. 24 hours later, we were all sitting in a Mexican restaurant in Cave City enjoying good food and good company. Very cool. It’s nice to rally with friends in the middle of an adventure like this. Really helps recharge the batteries.

Well, tomorrow we’re riding early. Well, not that early because we’re staying in the Central Time Zone but are starting the ride in Eastern. It’s made logistics for tomorrow a bit odd. So I should get some sleep in preparation for whatever craziness happens tomorrow. Night.