Underground
Background: About two hours of driving from where we currently reside lies Mammoth Caves, the worlds longest known cave system. My memory is as good as always, but I'm thinking they're guessing it's somewhere between 500 and 1,000 miles in total. That's a lot of caves. Anyway. When I came to visit for the first time back in -99, Mammoth Caves was one of the places K considered taking me. It didn't happen then, due in part to the fact that it's a four hour drive from where we used to live, and that was really pushing it for a day trip. Later on, we have planned to go at about 88,382 different occasions, but for one reason or another (usually laziness) we never got around to it. We actually went so far as to drive the entire way there only to turn around and go home again when we couldn't find a hotel that was quite to our liking.
Enter This Weekend.
We planned to go DAYS in advance, something that is fairly unique to us. We committed. We recommitted. We tried to talk ourselves out of going but stayed on target. Much to our surprise, we found ourselves in the car this morning, heading vaguely south and vaguely west. After a greatly productive drive, including Gardening for Nerds 101, but that's another post, we arrive. We even managed to keep in mind the fact that the western part of the state is on Central time rather than Eastern (just because they're a bunch of dweebs). We get our tickets. We watch the little films about caves that they have you watch while you wait. We take advantage of The Facilities, as it'll be a two hour tour with no further access to these. We load up my jacket with batteries for the camera, assuming we'll be taking a million pictures. We load on to buses and go to the entrance of the cave. Short safety and rules and regulations bit. Right. Don't touch, don't fall off any heights, don't touch anything, don't throw rocks at people, don't touch the walls, floor or ceiling, keep kids near you, don't touch ANYTHING. Right. Standard fare. We enter the cave, and somehow quite shortly get a feeling that this tour, it might suck.
It starts out with stairs. Lots of stairs. Leading down. This is to be expected. What is not to be expected is the fact that the light varies between 100-watts-right-in-your-face and absolutely pitch frickin' black. The pitch black sections quite often combine with the times that the ceiling drops to about 4 feet tall, which makes for an interesting walk for your forehead. Just as a reference, I could mention the fact that K used her cell phone as an emergency flashlight of sorts and about eight people were intensely grateful. But okay. Badly planned lighting. I can understand that. We're in a cave. However. The stairs and railings I have some difficulty with. See, they're made of polished stainless steel. There are, indeed, some sort of bumps in the steps, which the guide referred to as cheesegraters. I don't know how good they would be for grating cheese, but their anti-slip properties are absolutely zero. The railings, really and truly are polished stainless steel. In a cave. Which is wet. You know how much good a wet, polished, round stainless steel bar is for providing a handhold? Absolutely none, that's how much. This makes this section somewhat forgettable, as it's hard to enjoy yourself much when there's an imminent risk of falling to your death somewhere in the absolute blackness that surrounds you. It is later brought back to the forefront of your mind, however, when the guide explains that these stairs are often referred to as the "million dollar stairs" as each step cost on average $3,000 A PIECE to put in. Let me tell you people, they weren't worth it.
Anyway. You get off the stairs, and now you're in the Actual Cave System. Speech by guide. Also, at the exact same time, speech by a group of people that are part of the tour. Not related to what they guide is saying or anything, just a bunch of people deciding that they can't for their lives shut up for two minutes during the few minutes that the guide talks. There were two groups that did most of the talking, and at first I was a little relieved that it was not just that the local rednecks that were chattering, but that the foreign tourists were even worse. It occurred to me after a moment that I kinda fall into both the local redneck and foreigner categories, so I ended up doubly ashamed by association. To my relief, there was shortly thereafter a group of girls about 12 years old or so, from somewhere up northeastern U.S. that kept up the most inane babble I think I have ever have the misfortune to be barraged by, so at least that was a group I didn't feel associated with.
Next up, we come to the part they call The New York Subway. This is named so because of it's striking similarities with a subway system. You will note here, that a subway system is a system of wide, roundish tunnels, COMPLETELY DEVOID OF ANY INTERESTING FEATURES WHATSOEVER. The likeness was, indeed, quite striking. Tromp, tromp, tromp, walk, walk, walk. I should mention here that the floor is consistantly wet and impressively slippery, although the stainless steel is now mercifully no longer there to scrape up wounds on, but the floor is just as slick.
Another big room, and the guide talks to us again. I fail to hear most of it, due to the Hungarian group next to us, who is talking excitedly about something in Hungarian. I was kind of impressed with them, as they were deadly quiet during most of the previous hour, when we were just walking through featureless, if slippery, caves, but now that the guide is trying to say something, they're just exploding with conversational goodness. Anyway. Through the Hungarian, I manage to pick up a part of what the guide said about earthquakes. The concept was that you're actually safer under ground, due to the fact that the forces of an earthquake dissipate. Right. 275 feet above us, there are green, open, rolling fields of grass. If there's an earthquake and you're up there, above ground, you may fall on it. If you're below, it may fall on you. I'm thinking I'd rather take the 50% risk of stumbling on the bluegrass than the 25% risk of having 276,000,000,000 tons of limestone fall on my head. But I digress.
We walk again. A lot. In total, the tour is two hours. About 90 minutes of that is walking, so there's quite a bit of it, really. And here's the thing. After 87 minutes of walking, all you see is... Well. Cave. As in... your average, garden variety type of cave. Rock walls. Rock floor. Rock ceiling. Fallen rocks. Water. No stalagmites and stalactites and formations and underground waterfalls or anything else. Nothing. Just plain rock walls.
In all fairness though, the very last thing on the tour is this one room, the Frozen Niagara. This place had by far the most complex and beautiful formations I've seen in a cave. It was HUGE. It was intensely well lit. It was cascading and billowing and striping and falling and rising and dripping and flowing and all of that stuff that stone formations can do when they're really neat. And here's the kicker. This one thing that made the tour worthwhile, was an optional add-on. I don't know how many people didn't go down there, but there were several. The guides made no particular mention of it, besides the clue-in of the name, instead, they were excitedly talking about the fact that we might get to see a rat that had it's nest near the exit. Uh.
Anyway. Turns out that this room is a TWO MINUTE WALK from the exit of the cave. Now, why, I asked, would they not have taken us in that way, and saved us two hours of walking bent into our navels, and instead given us the opportunity to take in a tripod or so and take time to really look at the final room, which you now felt like you had to get a move on in, so people could get on the buses and go home? K, of course, provided the answer: You couldn't charge $12 per person for a 15-minute tour.
Well. Despite the griping, we still had fun. K claims that some of the other tours they have are much, much more fun, and although I don't see us going back any time soon, we didn't regret going or anything. Next time, though, I'm sneaking in through the back door and letting the other losers walk through two hours of subway tunnels.
Enter This Weekend.
We planned to go DAYS in advance, something that is fairly unique to us. We committed. We recommitted. We tried to talk ourselves out of going but stayed on target. Much to our surprise, we found ourselves in the car this morning, heading vaguely south and vaguely west. After a greatly productive drive, including Gardening for Nerds 101, but that's another post, we arrive. We even managed to keep in mind the fact that the western part of the state is on Central time rather than Eastern (just because they're a bunch of dweebs). We get our tickets. We watch the little films about caves that they have you watch while you wait. We take advantage of The Facilities, as it'll be a two hour tour with no further access to these. We load up my jacket with batteries for the camera, assuming we'll be taking a million pictures. We load on to buses and go to the entrance of the cave. Short safety and rules and regulations bit. Right. Don't touch, don't fall off any heights, don't touch anything, don't throw rocks at people, don't touch the walls, floor or ceiling, keep kids near you, don't touch ANYTHING. Right. Standard fare. We enter the cave, and somehow quite shortly get a feeling that this tour, it might suck.
It starts out with stairs. Lots of stairs. Leading down. This is to be expected. What is not to be expected is the fact that the light varies between 100-watts-right-in-your-face and absolutely pitch frickin' black. The pitch black sections quite often combine with the times that the ceiling drops to about 4 feet tall, which makes for an interesting walk for your forehead. Just as a reference, I could mention the fact that K used her cell phone as an emergency flashlight of sorts and about eight people were intensely grateful. But okay. Badly planned lighting. I can understand that. We're in a cave. However. The stairs and railings I have some difficulty with. See, they're made of polished stainless steel. There are, indeed, some sort of bumps in the steps, which the guide referred to as cheesegraters. I don't know how good they would be for grating cheese, but their anti-slip properties are absolutely zero. The railings, really and truly are polished stainless steel. In a cave. Which is wet. You know how much good a wet, polished, round stainless steel bar is for providing a handhold? Absolutely none, that's how much. This makes this section somewhat forgettable, as it's hard to enjoy yourself much when there's an imminent risk of falling to your death somewhere in the absolute blackness that surrounds you. It is later brought back to the forefront of your mind, however, when the guide explains that these stairs are often referred to as the "million dollar stairs" as each step cost on average $3,000 A PIECE to put in. Let me tell you people, they weren't worth it.
Anyway. You get off the stairs, and now you're in the Actual Cave System. Speech by guide. Also, at the exact same time, speech by a group of people that are part of the tour. Not related to what they guide is saying or anything, just a bunch of people deciding that they can't for their lives shut up for two minutes during the few minutes that the guide talks. There were two groups that did most of the talking, and at first I was a little relieved that it was not just that the local rednecks that were chattering, but that the foreign tourists were even worse. It occurred to me after a moment that I kinda fall into both the local redneck and foreigner categories, so I ended up doubly ashamed by association. To my relief, there was shortly thereafter a group of girls about 12 years old or so, from somewhere up northeastern U.S. that kept up the most inane babble I think I have ever have the misfortune to be barraged by, so at least that was a group I didn't feel associated with.
Next up, we come to the part they call The New York Subway. This is named so because of it's striking similarities with a subway system. You will note here, that a subway system is a system of wide, roundish tunnels, COMPLETELY DEVOID OF ANY INTERESTING FEATURES WHATSOEVER. The likeness was, indeed, quite striking. Tromp, tromp, tromp, walk, walk, walk. I should mention here that the floor is consistantly wet and impressively slippery, although the stainless steel is now mercifully no longer there to scrape up wounds on, but the floor is just as slick.
Another big room, and the guide talks to us again. I fail to hear most of it, due to the Hungarian group next to us, who is talking excitedly about something in Hungarian. I was kind of impressed with them, as they were deadly quiet during most of the previous hour, when we were just walking through featureless, if slippery, caves, but now that the guide is trying to say something, they're just exploding with conversational goodness. Anyway. Through the Hungarian, I manage to pick up a part of what the guide said about earthquakes. The concept was that you're actually safer under ground, due to the fact that the forces of an earthquake dissipate. Right. 275 feet above us, there are green, open, rolling fields of grass. If there's an earthquake and you're up there, above ground, you may fall on it. If you're below, it may fall on you. I'm thinking I'd rather take the 50% risk of stumbling on the bluegrass than the 25% risk of having 276,000,000,000 tons of limestone fall on my head. But I digress.
We walk again. A lot. In total, the tour is two hours. About 90 minutes of that is walking, so there's quite a bit of it, really. And here's the thing. After 87 minutes of walking, all you see is... Well. Cave. As in... your average, garden variety type of cave. Rock walls. Rock floor. Rock ceiling. Fallen rocks. Water. No stalagmites and stalactites and formations and underground waterfalls or anything else. Nothing. Just plain rock walls.
In all fairness though, the very last thing on the tour is this one room, the Frozen Niagara. This place had by far the most complex and beautiful formations I've seen in a cave. It was HUGE. It was intensely well lit. It was cascading and billowing and striping and falling and rising and dripping and flowing and all of that stuff that stone formations can do when they're really neat. And here's the kicker. This one thing that made the tour worthwhile, was an optional add-on. I don't know how many people didn't go down there, but there were several. The guides made no particular mention of it, besides the clue-in of the name, instead, they were excitedly talking about the fact that we might get to see a rat that had it's nest near the exit. Uh.
Anyway. Turns out that this room is a TWO MINUTE WALK from the exit of the cave. Now, why, I asked, would they not have taken us in that way, and saved us two hours of walking bent into our navels, and instead given us the opportunity to take in a tripod or so and take time to really look at the final room, which you now felt like you had to get a move on in, so people could get on the buses and go home? K, of course, provided the answer: You couldn't charge $12 per person for a 15-minute tour.
Well. Despite the griping, we still had fun. K claims that some of the other tours they have are much, much more fun, and although I don't see us going back any time soon, we didn't regret going or anything. Next time, though, I'm sneaking in through the back door and letting the other losers walk through two hours of subway tunnels.