Well they say it's always good to go out with a bang... and I think that is just what I have done before leaving for Scotland. Let's just say that the Wild Cave Tour at Mammoth Cave definitely lived up to its name!
Dad had been waiting for Julia for turn 16 and meet the age requirement so we could embark on our Kentucky spelunking adventure. Therefore, it was no surprise to me when Dad called me up out of the blue one day back in July to ask if I would be up for a whirlwind weekend trip to Kentucky. Of course, I was all in.
Now, when I say whirlwind, I mean whirlwind. Between the hours of 7 AM on Saturday and 1:30 AM Monday morning, Dad, Julia, and I flew to and from Nashville, visited Vanderbilt, wandered around downtown, got our fill of country music at the Grand Old Opry, and then drove up to Kentucky where we proceeded to spend 6 hours underground in Mammoth Cave. It was quite exhausting, but in the best possible way. Check out the caving that we got to do!
http://www.nps.gov/maca/planyourvisit/tour-wildcave.htm
Not the greatest map, but you can kind of get a feel for the mileage we covered. We started down at the bottom at the Carmichael Entrance and came out over on the right side at the Frozen Niagra Entrance. A total of 6 miles underground!
"Canyoning" as they called it
Group shot after the appropriately named "Hell Hole"
That's our guide in the back... she was MY AGE!
The "Bare Hole," named for a guy who shimmied out successfully... but accidentally left his pants behind
Down down down...
Now I will be completely honest, I had several genuine freak out moments while we were down there. They really, really aren't kidding when they call it the "Wild Cave Tour." Before we started our guide held up her hiking boot and declared, "9 inches. That is the smallest space you'll be crawling through today. About the height of this here boot" (Yes, she did have quite the Kentucky accent). Here is the description of the tour we took from the Mammoth Cave National Park website:
Physical Challenges: Heights that involve free-climbing cave walls; lengthy crawls through areas as tight as 9 inches high; walking in a crouched position; hand and knee crawls over jagged rocks and dirt; crawling through wet areas; twisting into and out of tight crawlway openings.
Let's see... heights... check, lengthy crawls... BIG check, crouched positions, yup I remember those quite well, jagged rocks and dirt (so that's where I got all these cuts and bruises from?!?), wet areas (thank goodness my camera made it out of there alive), and last but certainly not least tight crawl way openings... they got it all! But don't get me wrong - despite enduring one pretty legitimate panic attack right before entering a delightful crawl entitled "The Cheese Grater" (kudos to whoever named it, the name fits it perfectly), our spelunking experience was completely worth it. Once we had surfaced and reentered the beautiful world of sunshine, birds, and green trees, Dad asked me whether I would take my kids to do the tour when they turned 16. Quite honestly, I still don't have an answer for him... maybe just give me a few more years to completely erase the Cheese Grater, Kathleen's Crawl, and the Hell Hole from my memory. But maybe, just maybe, I'll go back one day. (Big maybe...)
