Fat Man's Misery

As I said in the last post, I went to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky on Monday. I would have never thought of doing so, but my Dad mentioned it and then it was stuck in my head. How could I be so close and not go? So cave exploring I went. Mammoth is the longest cave system in the world with about 350 charted miles of caves. That's just what they know about, it could be hundreds of miles longer, they just don't know. They have about a dozen different tours to take and I opted for the Historic tour. This follows the path that early cave tourist took and explores a bit of that history. Next time I go I'm definitely going to go on the gas lantern led tour and the 6 1/2 hour long wild cave tour that explores all the caves off the beaten path. They only take 15 people on that and you supposedly get filthy. Sounds cool. But that's next time.

The caves are unbelievably huge. Some of the chambers could probably hold hockey games if you trucked in the rink and bleachers. One chamber is called the Methodist Church because it was actually used as such for a while. Imagine having church in a cave lit only with gas laterns. The smoke is still on the cave walls above the ledges where they lined up the lanterns. The top photo is of the staircase coming into the Methodist church. I wish I had some pictures to show you the enormity of the caves, but as you might have guessed, it's pretty dark in there and the lighting they have is very dim. My favorite part of my tour was Fat Man's Misery, a narrow, winding passage that even gave me a bit of a squeeze. Although the lack of height was worse for me than the lack of width.

The disappointing part of the tour other than only seeing 2 of the 350 charted miles was the size of the group. It was a big group with lots of families and made for a less than desirable cave experience. I wished I could have been in a small group that could remain quiet for more than two seconds. I feel a cave should be experienced quietly, or at least differently than a walk down the sidewalk. Many of the people were just tourists looking to get a glimpse at an attraction. I wanted more of an experience of the cave, you know? Next time. And there will be a next time.

The last two photos are candle smoke graffiti left by early cave tourists. The dates are authentic. It was neat to see who had come before you, at least those from the 1800s, not Joe Schmoe 1981. There were a lot of those.