Joe, Bryn and I have been up to good this past ten days. Because he was on vacation from his practice we threw a few changes of clothing and a roll of paper towels (for drink-spilling emergencies) into a small carry-on bag, hooked our bikes on the back rack, tossed in Bryn’s leash, bed, dishes, kibbles and two toys, hopped into the car and pointed it south. Enough of the bleak mid-winter, thought we; let’s explore much warmer Charleston, in South Carolina. Why? Because it’s there, and we’d never been.
(Spontaneity is the soul of Fun.)
So, on New Year’s Eve, at 5 a.m. (early starts are best) we cruised along on I-75, an intrigued Bryn perched in back in her bed-nest looking out the window, Joe driving with a story in his ear buds--and I? Well, I wanted only to look at the ever-changing topography.
We’d always wanted to visit Mammoth Cave National Park in south central Kentucky, and now it was mostly on our way to Charleston, so we switched to I-69 at Flint. The north-south freeway was almost empty of vehicles this early, but later in the morning it buzzed with trucks and cars. The landscape- farmland, and winter-bleak forests set off by a light smattering of snow- lined much of either side of it.
We entered Indiana, pausing frequently at rest areas to stretch our legs. Bryn busily sniffed every inch of the dog sections, 95% clean of poop: just the odd ‘oops’ made walking Bryn easy. Poop bags were usually provided.
But in Kentucky, while the rest areas’ buildings were clean and amenity-full, doggy areas were sometimes peppered with doo-doo. Navigating through the piles was a challenge. No poop bags were offered (never mind, we’d brought our own) so owners were simply letting their pets relieve themselves before they shot off again. I had to tiptoe most carefully over the large expanse of fouled, frosted grass.
A little research on the web helped us decide to stop in Cave City, Kentucky, for one night. Hmmm. Either there’d be no room at any inn for us- (most places refuse to accommodate dogs)- or people would be elsewhere celebrating the holiday. So inns, longing for customers, wouldn’t mind including our quiet, non-shedding, car-kinked Bryn. Would they?
A more careful exploration of the internet yielded valuable info: Super 8 motels took dogs! But there was one caveat: pets could weigh no more than 35 pounds.
Uh-oh.
At the next rest stop I dug out 50-pound Bryn’s brush and groomed her coat to a soft puff. If the clerk asked to view her we’d say she was mostly fluff and air- and hope for the best.
Bleary-eyed at dusk from eleven hours on the road we found a Super 8, mostly empty, just outside Cave City. Happily, the sleepy clerk didn’t care if we had a walrus in our car. We paid, took the key, and drove to our ground floor room, toward the back of the motel. It boasted clean double beds, a TV and small toilet with shower. But the tired gray striped carpet, though vacuumed, wanted a thorough shampoo. Ah, well...Bryn was ‘in,’ so we became ceiling gazers.
New Year’s morning we fed Bryn, checked out, repacked our stuff, visited Bob Evans for a side order of bacon and two mugs of coffee and drove to the park (open all year, except Christmas Day) for the 9 a.m. ‘Frozen Niagara’ tour, lasting just over an hour. It is designed for the older set, or people with younger children. This suited us fine, as Joe had recently had a partial knee replacement and wasn’t up to longer tours or rough, very long ascents and descents- yet. He’s tall and slim, and healing fast, so we could always return for the more adventurous tours another time.
Here’s the thing: I’d never seen a cave, never mind a shockingly awesome one, ever. So this would be a fine way to ring in 2016.
Happily, there were only about fifteen other people on our tour. (Oh- one thing. You can’t sign up the same day of the tour you want. It must be the day before. We signed up in Indianapolis, at a rest stop, on New Year’s Eve.)
We parked in the almost empty parking lot, settled Bryn in her bed-nest on the car’s back seat, shivered outside while waiting for the Mammoth Cave bus, settled into its warm interior and were delivered, after a ten-minute drive, to an unassuming, almost hidden entrance in the forest. Our ranger unlocked a small, thick, padlocked steel door, installed in the 1920s to protect the interior from vandals- and people who might wander in to explore and never wander out.
We filed in.
The first humans entered this place 4,000 years ago, and have been gasping ever since. The interior is- I grope for the right descriptive adjectives- massive, intricate, and wildly beautiful. Carefully placed lights highlight its muted creamy buff-gold color. Sweeping cavern ‘rooms’ and giant columns- a marriage of stalactites and stalagmites- boast fanciful, fantastic twists and turns. Stalactites, long weirdly formed slim or fat needles, take eons to develop. (Water from rainfall drips down through Kentucky’s permeable limestone, stabilized by sandstone, to gradually form, one grain at a time, the incredible spears. Stalagmites’ much wider bases ‘grow’ up from the floors. When they finally meet the descending, needle-y ‘tites, marvelous columns result.)
Misty streams of water, from recent heavy rains, showered down mere feet from us, from enormous heights.
In one area it looked as though a giant Salvador Dali-like Niagara Falls had been frozen in mid-tumble. Its countless slim, very tall ‘braided’ columns were beautifully illuminated, and, to me, reminiscent of a gigantic sixteenth century pipe organ.
The sight was- Magnificent.
I understate.
I have never seen anything remotely like Mammoth Cave.
Some of the passages we traversed were quite narrow, some expansive. Often the walls were damp or wet. We were asked not to touch them, as body oils are alien. At certain higher places the ranger pointed out clumps of green algae, carefully removed by trained volunteers every year. These develop from visitors bringing in microscopic bits of the outdoors, and from our exhalations.
It’s such a delicate environment!
There are transparent, eyeless shrimp and fish here that live in and around pristine pools. And there are bats. Lots of bats. (We saw none, however.)
An incredible fact: Over 400 miles of caves have been mapped, to date. Every year experienced cavers squeeze through newly discovered, dangerous cracks and holes, to explore and map what has never been seen before. It is the most complicated cave on the planet, and there seems to be no end to it.
Kentucky sits atop this astounding, unique underworld. Rivers and streams on many levels are slowly, steadily creating more fantastic formations that descend to very great depths, and rival the wonders of the Grand Canyon. Numerous huge sinkholes formed by eroding limestone can be seen from the air that aren’t obvious from the ground- Nature’s hint to the trained eye that something fantastic exists underneath.
Mammoth Cave is a World Heritage site not to be missed.
I don’t think my mouth closed once.
(More next week...)