Adventures in Kentucky- Part 2

You voted, we listened....and the winner was....
MAMMOTH CAVES!!!

Well, we were quite surprised that Mammoth Caves won by a landslide, but obviously it was in God's will that we go so it shouldn't have surprised us that much!

So this past Saturday we woke up early (yes, we woke up early on a Saturday!) and set off for Mammoth Caves with our backpacks full of snacks and our sunscreen in tote. The National Park is only about 1 hour and 45 minutes away and it was a lovely drive through Kentucky country (we passed Lincoln's Birthplace and My Old Kentucky Home State Parks...darn, I guess we'll have to save those for another day trip!). Basically Mammoth Caves is the World's largest cave system with over 300 miles of caves at multiple depths, most of which have never been explored. Its complete with your normal stalagtite and stalagmite formations as well as some pretty impressive holes and crevasses. The area that surrounds the Caves is known as Mammoth Caves National Park or "Cave Country" and hosts plenty of outdoorsy stuff like hiking, horseback riding, fishing, camping, etc.

I had done some research the night before and we had booked a 10:30 cave tour called the "New Entrance Tour" which is a .75 mile, 3 hour tour that is supposed to highlight some of the cave's finest features. Unfortunately I totally forgot we live on the cusp of a time zone so when we arrived at "10" it was really only 9:00!! Argh! Thankfully, we were able to make a last minute switch to the 9:00 tour, but although we made it onto the bus, our camera was abandoned in the car (which accounts for all the bad pictures taken by Greg's phone). A short bus ride later and about 80 of us were ready to take on the cave. We entered through something that literally looked like a steel door in a hill which seemed really creepy, but upon entering the temperature around you totally changes to a cool 60 or so degrees. It was really dark too, although on these particular tours they maintain a lighting system through out the cave. The first leg consisted of about a third of mile of stairs leading down into the cave depths and the surprising part was that the pathway and stairs were really nice and modern making for an easy (though damp and slippery) descent. The rest of the tour was traveling through various passageways and observing various different cave features which was all really interesting. Also, in one of the larger cave rooms our tour guide switched off the lights which was super spooky as I couldn't even see my own hand in front of my face!! Yikes! And yes, we did see some wildlife...we saw a little bat flying around. I think one of the highlights, though, was the feature called "Frozen Niagra" which was a huge structure of stalagmites with intricate features in something dubbed the "Drapery Room". It is so amazing what God creates and I'm sure there are plenty of dazzling sites that man may never discover and yet they still bring Him glory. It was a really neat experience and I hope to go back to do the "Wild Tour" which is a 6-7 hour tour of real hardcore, crawling, dirty spelunking tour!

After the caves we ate a sack lunch and still had most of the day left which left room for more fun times! Greg got to go on his very first ever kayaking trip! Winding through the park is a nice little river called Green River which supports two canoe outfitters. We rented a double kayak and the rental fee included us driving to the final destination and leaving our car and then them picking us up and dropping us off with the canoe 7 miles upstream where we would start our journey. After a short canoe queue we were launched into the river! It took us a bit, but once we got our rhythm down we passed quite a few canoes (of course they had little kids in them...) on our 3 hour journey. It was a splendid trip and quite relaxing and absolutely beautiful. I thin kone of the best parts was that it was different than the cave tour in which we were bustled together and rushed through with screaming kids (why you would take a 1 year old on this tour I know not). On the river it was much more tranquil and we could meander along at our own pace. As we paddled along we got to see some great scenery and actually quite a few water turtles! But, the most exciting part was when we got into a fight with a low hanging branch/log and ended up perpendicular to the stream of water. As we were fighting not to get pummeled into the tree a huge spider found its way into the boat and loosing all common sense I started screaming and standing to stamp out the spider. According to Greg this sent us capsizing and as the water filled the kayak it sank under the tree and pulled us along with it. We popped out beyond the tree branch after a few seconds and I rushed to grab my shorts and tee which were rushing downstream. Greg recollected our items and we reset on the shore, dumping out a whole kayak full of water. Luckily we didn't loose anything (except our protein bar was waterlogged) and I am proud to say that I was able to kill the spider even before it met a watery death! We eventually moved on and dried off, dropped our kayak off at the finish point and hopped back into the car to return to civilization and the rest of our 3 day weekend.

Fun times, although I must say I was INCREDIBLY sore in my arms a whole two days after the fact. But other than some minor aches and a capsizing surprise, I'm thankful for date days to get away and explore life here in good ole KY.