After hours of research,
Dad booked us on the Historic Tour of Mammoth Cave—
A 4 hour, 4 mile trek through the longest cave system in the world
See? Over 400 miles of caves!
Into the cave we go…
Previous visitors of the cave
Thought it was cool to leave their names behind
Using the smoke from candles—
They are EVERYWHERE
Here’s the Altar,
Where our guide Jarvis, who can only be described as intense,
Talked about 26 people coming into the cave
And 13 leaving
13 couples who got married here.
He was full of all sorts of stories and such
That he told with such suspense,
it was hard to not hang on his every word
How about this one:
The Bottomless Pit.
It’s not really bottomless obviously
But in the blackness of the cave, it’s 100 foot depth appears bottomless
And walking over it was spooky
Mom and I got suddenly claustrophobic about an hour into the tour.
Weird.
We got over it with some distracting conversations.
Even weirder—
Fat Man’s Misery didn’t bother us at all.
In fact, this winding keyhole-shaped passage
was our favorite part of the whole tour
Carrying lanterns as our only light,
We went to the lowest point of Mammoth Cave to the water table
And got to see The River Styx.
The used to have boat tours but it was hurting the ecosystem
So now you can just look at it.
One of our last stops was Mammoth Dome—
It was impressive
The formations were not as cool as Carlsbad
But the history and magnitude was pretty awesome.
Back on the surface,
We were sworn in as Junior Rangers
Before we headed off to a ropes course for the afternoon.
But…Tucker was barely too short.
He was beyond upset.
Plan B?
We did some shopping at a funny Little Rock shop
Where Tucker picked up this little gem:
And then found another adventure park!
We rode the gondola
All the way to the top of the hill
So we could fly back down
On the alpine slide!
Some were more fearless than others
Some had some weight to help with their speed
Tucker was just glad he was big enough
And I tried to see how fast I could go
And how close to the very end of the track I could stop
But better than the alpine slide
(Which we rode 3 times)…
Was the GO CARTS!
On the cruise,
We had a 15 minutes safety briefing and helmets
To drive the moderately fast go carts.
Here in rural Kentucky?
They pull start the engine and give you a wave.
Buckle up!
Dad and Tucker were successful at passing Weston
Who we have concluded really is just a slow driver.
Jackson was a bit less successful.
We never were able to get around him.
Turd.
We tried out a local restaurant for dinner
And discovered Mexican is the same wherever you are.
After some glow-in-the-dark football,
We settled in for one more night around the fire
Before the long drive home tomorrow
It’s been a good vacation
