Throughout all the many caves we’ve visited on this trip, Zoe has been desperate to get more of a genuine caving experience.  She’s always disappointed when either she’s not old enough, or her sisters aren’t old enough, to do the tours she really wants to do.  (It was a crushing disappointment to her that the Mammoth Cave Trog tour, which was for 7-12 year olds only and involved wearing overalls and headlamps and crawling through tunnels, was no longer running because the crazy Kentucky schools are back in session already.)  So this morning she and I went on the Violet City Lantern tour, a 3-hour, 3-mile strenuous trek through the cave by lantern light.

The rangers had all raved about this tour, and we weren’t disappointed.  In addition to the cool cave scenery, made especially romantic when lit only by old-fashioned gas lanterns, part of our route was along what’s called the Historic tour.  Now I’m as shallow and easily bored as the next person, and I have to admit the words “historic cave tour” hadn’t jumped out at me as bursting with excitement.  I thought it would be dry statistics about who discovered the cave and when and blah blah blah.  Instead, we saw the following, perfectly preserved due to the cave’s constant 54 degree temperature and 80% humidity: wooden pipes, made of poplar trees, that were used in a saltpeter mining operation run during the War of 1812, a ladder installed by Native Americans 2000-3000 years ago, various other Native American artifacts and drawings, 2500-year-old human poop, and stone huts – build right in the middle of the cave’s large passages, about a mile in – that were used to house tuberculosis patients in the hopes that the “healthy” cave air would provide a cure.  (In fact, it had the opposite effect – but the patients had agreed that they wouldn’t leave the cave until they were cured or dead.  Some of them spent 10 months in the cold, damp darkness of the cave – until there were sufficient fatalities that the medical authorities in charge decided to ban the experiment.  And in the meantime, tours were going through the cave, passing by the huts and peering at the patients.)  We saw the original rock paths used by tours in the 1800s, and walked on paths built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.  All in all, quite an experience and well worth the price of admission.

After this exciting morning, we got in the car and drove approximately 27 hours across Kentucky and Virginia.  Or at least it felt that way.  Someone needs to build an east/west highway here, stat.  It seems impossible to believe that the route we took was the most efficient one, so maybe google was just messing with us.

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From Bob:

The driving portion of this day got off to a bad start and it didn’t end that well, either.  The best thing about today is that we got our laundry washed and dried (though not folded and sorted) and we got out of our campsite on time.  Also, Zoe got to do a special lantern-lit cave tour with Jen.  Nadia and Lanie are probably happy that they could afford Pop-Tarts from the camp store while we laundered.   We managed to get some postcards off, too, and the laundry room had a few spare outlets that I could charge things in.  So the morning was actually a pretty productive time.

                Then we went to leave and drove around for a half hour and things started looking familiar.  Hey, there’s a sign for Mammoth Caves.  Is this a different part of the park?  No, we just drove in a big circle.  Jen was making sandwiches in the passenger seat and I must’ve got wrapped up in the book on CD (thanks for nothing, Crossman-Ellis family and your engaging audio literature). 

                After that it was just a slog through Kentucky, which I’m sure is a fine state, but it was like driving through molasses.  Even the brief bit of Tennessee we got into (I would not have thought it was possible to be in a state for a shorter duration than we were in Idaho, but such was our experience in Tennessee) and the novelty of going through the Cumberland Gap did not save the afternoon.   This is because driving through western Virginia is rather like driving through Kentucky.

                Even the knowledge that there was a mattress waiting for me and not a Thermarest did not perk me up.  I was perked up a little by the pizza from Pizza Plus in Duffield, VA.  We’ve been pizza-starved this trip, so any that we get seems good.  We may have left our one true chance for great pizza behind in Chicago with Colleen, but that was so early in the trip that it wasn’t high on our agenda.  And Colleen took us to some really top-notch places to eat, too, so we have no complaints.  It won’t be too long before we can order a White Buffalo at La Festa again.

                Talking about pizza is not making my headache feel any better.  I would say I’m dehydrated, but I had seven glasses of water at Pizza Plus.  It’s rather a hybrid fast-food, waitress-service place and although we sat near the soda fountain, the waitress was pouring our waters from a pitcher she brought out from the back.  If I could have gotten to that soda fountain, I might have drunk more water.   I don’t feel thirsty now, I feel smoky.  On this, our last night in a campground (we’re in spacious, two-room KOA cabin), we seem to be downwind from all the other sites.

                Enough complaining.  Good night.

                One more complaint: Although they clearly call it Mammoth Caves, there was not a single mammoth to be seen.  This seems like false advertising.