Today we went to Mammoth Cave to check it out. This cave system has 405 miles of mapped cave and a bunch more that is unmapped. Fortunately, we did not have to go all the way to the end of the longest branch.
We started the day driving about 35 miles to get our marvelous Virgin phone to work and made an appointment in the nearby town of Bowling Green, KY, to get Charlotte’s oil changed tomorrow. On the way back, we stopped for some diesel in Glasgow that was quite cheap ($2.359/gallon) and found that again our Visa card was refused due to B of A fraud protection folks being thoroughly fubarred about our situation on the road. The last time we spoke with these geniuses about our sometimes-available credit card, they indicated we would be getting new cards sent to our home where we aren’t due to a data breach that resulted in lots of folks being caught in the same situation we are enjoying. Until the new cards were received and activated, the idiot we previously spoke with stated that we could utilize our old cards. She lied. Peggy got ahold of Visa with our always-dependable Virgin phone and found they had changed the conditions unilaterally and we were now required to call Visa fraud protection every time we wanted to make a charge on the card. Peggy was clever, however, and got the fraud folks to again change the rules such that our old cards would be hunky-dory until we called to let them know we received the new cards and were activating them. I hope they were not lying again.
We eventually pulled into the Mammoth Cave visitor information center and bought two passages on something called the “Historic Tour,” a two mile foray underground into the absolutely black realm of the spelunker. After numerous repetitive warnings from our chubby guide outside in the 95 degree weather, we finally descended a long walkway where they stopped our group and gave us more safety tips about being in a cave along with a description of all the places we were going to wander through on our tour. It was sort of like the Today Show in the morning; there are numerous proclamations about what is coming up in the show but very little actual content because they spent all their time telling you about what is coming up.
Finally Ol’ Portly Girl figured we had enough and we descended into the cave. The cave is a monster – there are sections where you could probably pull off a football game in some places. This is a pretty dry cave so there is very little of the stalactites and stalagmites you see in Carlsbad Caverns but the sheer magnitude of the cave is impressive. After a hike of about a mile down the main tube, we turned off and encountered two sections that gave me some concern. The first one is called “Fat Man’s Misery” which was difficult for me to traverse because I am a porker. Immediately following this was “Tall Man’s Misery” which was also a problem for me because I am 6′-5″ tall and the opening is about 3’0” tall for a ways. After considerable squeezing, grunting, sweating and head bumping, I emerged on the other side of these obstacles with my shirt closely resembling a wet dishrag. Peggy shot right through because she is shaped much better for these kinds of challenges. A good deal of the cave has quite low ceilings and despite my crabbing through underneath them, I emerged with only three lumps on my head and a dirty shirt.
Once we got through the old, fat, tall guy challenges we arrived at a little amphitheater underground where Ol’ Portly Girl gave us some more long explanations of stuff nobody cared about before proceeding to some other really neat rooms and passageways underground. Near the end, we came to a pretty spectacular dribbling waterfall that drops about 150 feet and some monstrous columns before arriving at a steel stair structure that only has 155 upward steps before arriving on a higher cave level. Once you get to the top, a short walk takes you to a gigantic room called “The Rotunda.” It is pretty spectacular for an underground thingy and from here it is only another 75 steps up to the cave exit. It is very humid in the cave, but cool. When we emerged from the cave, it was very humid and 99 degrees. My glasses fogged up. Another quarter mile uphill and we were back to the visitor center and our air conditioned truck.
Photos are mostly impossible in the cave because they do not allow flash and even if they did, the spaces are just too massive for a flash to be any good. Nevertheless, the trip into the cave was pretty terrific and I would probably go again if I chose a shorter tour. The “Historic Tour” is 2 miles in length and involves 440 steps and costs $14 a head. There are shorter and cheaper tours but they only run them a few times a day. You cannot go in the cave without being on a tour which is different from Carlsbad Caverns where you can wander at will and travel any length or speed you desire. Additionally, in Carlsbad you are not required to listen to the inane babbling of a Federal Park Ranger nor are you herded like dumb sheep by a guide with an irritating voice and manner. Carlsbad also has modern, adequate lighting so you can see where you are going. I am sure the idiot herders at Mammoth Cave have many concerns about stupid tourists tumbling down bottomless holes in the cave and, to make things more dangerous, the lighting is terrible but it seemed the Ranger devoted most of the tour to herding us bozos through the sometimes-challenging paths, stairs, bridges, tubes and deadly chasms you will see along the route. I think it would be better if they threw those who ask the Ranger stupid questions about whether the Native Americans had left any graffiti or where the stalactites were into the holes along the path but I was disappointed. Can’t win ’em all.