Mammoth Cave

Misty entrance to Mammoth Cave

We camped just outside of Mammoth Cave last night. Most of the tours through the cave involve over 300 steps, so Mary decided not to risk it with her knees. I took the historic tour, which talks about the history of the cave and enters the cave through its natural entrance. Since we arrived at 9:30, there were only 26 on my tour, versus the 121 people we met as we were leaving the cave. The Indians mined the cave for minerals for many centuries. During the War of 1812, there was a salt peter mine here, largely mined by black slaves. They made water pipes out of trees here, coring out the center and stringing the logs into the tunnel. The water was used to separate the salt peter. When the dirt no longer had salt peter it was said to have “petered out”. After the war, the price of salt peter dropped by a factor of 10, so the people began giving tours of the cave. As we walked through the cave, we could see many signatures made by these early cave visitors using their candles including Steven Bishop, who was the first to get past the "bottomless pit" to explore new sections of the cave. Mammoth cave isn’t a particularly pretty cave, there aren’t many of typical cave features caused by water dissolving limestone into various features, because much of the cave is soluble and insoluble layers of rock.  We traversed huge chambers with flat roofs and some connecting passages where we had to duck down and squeeze through.

Fat Man's Remorse

 The fame of Mammoth Cave is that it is the longest cave known, about 400 miles of cave in a 7 square mile area. While my tour didn’t go there, there is also an underground river here which eventually becomes part of the Green River. After visiting the cave, we started the trek through Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois to stop for the night outside St. Louis, Missouri.

Looking up