Violet City Lantern Tour - Mammoth Cave National Park

Exploring a cave by lantern light! How could we not do this? 

However, after experiencing that pitch darkness yesterday, I was unsure how this would play out. In a group of about 40 people, we have only 12 lanterns! The lanterns were old school, flame lanterns. It was exciting! Our lamps had a glass bulb around the flames for safety and such. People before, however used lard oil lamps with no glass. Using lard, would cause smoke that would cover the glass and essentially render the lanterns useless. Before lanterns, prehistoric man used cane reeds, bunched up together and lit with fire.

Cane Reeds used as Torches by Prehistoric Man

Lard Lantern. Slightly blurry, oops.

When we first entered the cave, it was the sample entrance as the self guided discover tour. The path was lit and familiar. We then deviated off and walked further, before we stopped and were talk about the saltpeter mining that happened there. It was to make gunpowder for the war of 1812. 

Eventually, we were around no lights, and just the lights of our lanterns! It was darker than our previous trips in the Mammoth Cave, but the light was sufficient. So many times, I would look up and see lanterns snaking ahead. It was beautiful! I wanted to take a photo of it, but in that darkness and with people continuously moving, I only got blurs! 

Lantern blurs

 

Lanterns, not moving, looked so pretty!

The caves were once used as a "hospital". It was believed that cave air would cure "Consumption", or what we call tuberculosis. We saw a couple of cabins built in the caves, where the sick came and lived. The cave's constant temperature and humidity was believed to cure consumption.  This, however, wasn't true and the hospital closed in just 10 months. 

Molly Miller's Cabin - This was her husband's cabin, where he lived in the hospital in the cave to cure his tuberculosis. Molly and her daughter visited him often here.

This part of the cave we were exploring had been used by ancient man! He came here regularly and lots and lots of artifacts have been found in the these caves that hinted at their lives and purposes for coming into the cave. 

Part of a Slipper found - Artifact. (Probably 2000+ years old)

Gourds used as bowls. 

The caves are lined with Epsom salts. These are used as laxatives. We know that prehistoric man consumed these salts too, because over 160 samples of paleofaeces have been found! We saw one. It was big, and over all these years it must have got dehydrated. That poor soul! 

Paleofaeces. hehe

In another area we stopped in, our guide told us a story of when the CCC were working there. They had stopped work for a break and were sitting up on rocks resting. One of the people's hats falls back and as he is reaching behind to feel for it, he feels something round and hairy. Since rocks aren't typically hairy, he is wondering what it is. What he had found was a mummified prehistoric man! He was perfectly well preserved because of the cave air. He still had his hair, skin, tissue and contents of his last meal in his stomach! The man, "Lost John", was crushed between a rock and that's how he died and why he remained there until the CCC man found him. He was since removed from the cave and displayed, but the outside air affected him and he started to decompose. He was moved around a bit and finally buried somewhere in mammoth caves. His location was known only to the people who buried him and it is passed on in a sealed envelope to each new director of the Mammoth Cave National Park. Lost John was dated to be 2300 years old!!!!

"Lost John" was found crushed under this rock. 

We saw two water falls in the caves this time. And unlike falls we see above ground that are usually water falling off the edge of a mountain, the falls in the caves fall from the ceiling to the ground. Like, someone broke a hole in the ceiling and now there is a stream of water falling down. If the guides didn't shine their torches on the water, we would never have been able to see it with our lantern lights. 

My favourite of the two, and what was probably the most beautiful sight I saw in the caves was the Elizabeth falls. One of the guides went to it, and held his torch under it, so the water was lit all the way up to the ceiling from below. It was a narrow shimmering beam of cascading diamonds.  I realise this effect is only because of the torch, but it doesn't matter. The image was stunning. 

Elizabeth Falls. Or, Falling Diamonds

After the falls, we climbed the Albert Staircase and eventually made our way to "Violet City". Made of stalactites and Stalagmites, it definitely looked like a city. 

Violet City. 
It is hard to take photos of the whole "city" because of the lack of light. But it was a beautiful sight! 

From there, we exited the caves. The entrance/exit looked so hidden in all the shrubbery, in true cave fashion :)

The entrance is hidden there

See it now?

Self Guided Discovery Tour - Mammoth Cave National Park

Our second day at Mammoth Cave National Park. We didn't have anything planned for the morning. We had first thought we would hike somewhere. But, the heat was pretty unbearable and I noticed that they have a self-guided Discovery tour into the caves while I was waiting for Saurabh. Before I could finish telling him about my idea, he had seen the same thing, and was telling me about it. :)

We got tickets and then headed to the Historic Entrance, a short distance from the visitors center. The walk there, was short, but so hot and humid! As soon as we got near the cave, it was like passing by an air conditioner! The change in temperature in the air was so drastic and refreshing! :) 

Historic Entrance to Mammoth Caves

This Discovery Tour is about a mile in the caves. It had items found in the cave on display and information boards about the the history, geography, and animals of the caves. 

There is a bat disease, White-Nose Syndrome, that has infected the bats in Mammoth Caves and killed nearly 90% of the bats here. To prevent this fungus from spreading elsewhere, all visitors to the caves must walk over a turf mat, and then another mat soaked with fungicide after the tours. 

Driving Around Mammoth Cave National Park

After the Grand Avenue Tour and a quick lunch, we decided to drive around Mammoth Cave National Park. The park is pretty, but not as dramatic, over ground, as other National Parks. It was still a fun 1-2 hour drive circular route. 

The first thing of note was the ferry crossing. Unlike that large ferry and 30 minute ferry ride in Skye, this was very quick. The ferry was very basic. A raft on hormones. 3 cars could fit, and it took about 5 minutes to cross the narrow bit of Green River. There was no charge! :) I was driving, and I was quite thrilled by the experience. 

Headed to the Ferry!

Boarding! 

On the Ferry!

Us :)

Disembarking

After the ferry crossing, we just drove around. It was pretty. At parts the trees completely shaded the roads, and it was beautiful and cooling. Oh, the roads were full of dead butterflies. These silly guys just sat on the roads, and got run over. So silly! There was plenty of grass and trees where they would have been safe. But, no. 

We stopped at a pond and did a quick little walking loops around it. On the loop we watched a caterpillar slung from a leaf on a tree work its way up an almost invisible silk thread :). 

Caterpillar clambering up

We stopped at the Joppa Church and Graveyard. This church along with another served the families that lived on the Mammoth Cave, before they were relocated to make the area a national park. 

Joppa Church and Graveyard

Grand Avenue Tour - Mammoth Cave National Park

Our first hike into Mammoth Caves! The world's largest cave system. 405 miles of mapped and chartered caves!  

After a long day yesterday, with the hike to Devil's Bathtub and then the 5+ hour drive to Mammoth Cave National Park (with no lunch and finally having dinner at 10 PM), we weren't sure how we would manage this 9:00AM 4 hour, 4 mile hike. But, a good night's sleep can do wonders and off we were!

We stepped into the caves, and the temperature immediately dropped to ~54F. The chill was surprising, but we eventually got through it. Our shorts and T-shirt were sufficient. The tour group of about 70 people stepped in and we all collected around the guide, for basic instructions and general information about the caves. 

The temperature suddenly lowered!

Tours in the caves began in 1816! Next year, will be 200 years of tours in these caves, making Mammoth Cave the 2nd oldest (after Niagara Falls) tourist attraction in the United States. Back then, tourists that came in were different...they used to dress differently. They were dressed in 3 piece suits or fancy dresses. The paths weren't laid out as they are now. It would have been a much more strenuous and difficult tour. 

In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps was formed and some of them were sent to Mammoth Caves to build the pathways we were walking on. Richard, our guide, had a 90+ year old tourist a few years ago who was part of the CCC that did the work here. He just had to come back and see what had happened to all the work he had put in! :) 

The caves were once a location of an ancient sea. As the mollusks and other organisms died and collected at the bottom, it created the main rock of the cave. About 15 million years ago, the Green River eroded through the upper sandstone into the limestone, beginning the cave formation. In time, underground streams began to flow to the Green River through the limestone, forming what are now the highest passageways (level 1) in Mammoth Cave. Over the last 10 million years, the Green River cut down into its valley. Underground streams dropped to meet the river, forming deeper and deeper cave levels. As the underground streams dropped, older streambeds became dry. The passages at the top of the caver at the oldest. The cave currently has 6 levels, with the river at the 6th level, making caves as I writes this. They describe the cave system as an upside down bowl of spaghetti. It is an excellent analogy.  The spaghetti are the caves and the bowl is the sandstone and shale capstone that envelopes the caves. 

After the instructions and information we proceeded through canyon and phreatic passageways in the caves. The caves have gypsum flowers and formations all over. The grow 1mm every 900-1100 years! Some of them were so big, I can't even imagine how old the must be! 

Gypsum Flowers

Walking through caves like this, was an experience neither of us had ever had. I have been in caves before. We go in, we look at multiple beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations, take photos and soon leave. You don't walk in the cave for long distances. Today, we hiked 4 miles in the cave. We went through some really narrow paths, some with low ceilings so we had to bend and walk, some paths were a steep incline and some a steep decline. It would have been really difficult to scale those without the railings fit in. The geography and the formations cut out by the water kept us in wonder as we trudged along.  It's such a different world and as we walked it was so beautiful, ever changing, challenging and just completely unique. 

Phreatic Passageway

Snowball Dining Room. The ceiling looks like it is crusted with snowballs  

Richard stopped in one place to tell us about the life in the caves. There are 114 different species that live in the cave either their whole life or visit the cave. There are bats, beetles, crickets, eyeless shrimp, eyeless crayfish, eyeless fish, eyeless scorpion, Kentucky fresh water fish and microorganisms. All the animals have adapted to life in the caves with no light. The fish, shrimp, scorpion and crayfish have lost their eyes since they have no use for them, and they also have no pigment. They are translucent and you could see their systems working!  

Richard showed us a camel cricket he found in the cave - it has longer legs and and antenna to help it feel and move in the dark cave.

My favourite part of this tour was when we sat down in one place. He asked us to stay silent, and all the lights were turned off. The Silence! But the silence wasn't as shocking as the darkness. The pitch blackness! I have never in my life experienced such darkness. You could not see anything! There was no "adjusting" to the darkness, because there was absolutely no light to help you adjust. It was something! 

After they turned the lights back on, we were told about Charles F Harvey who was lost in the cave for 39 hours. In that darkness, that silence. They did find him, and when they did, he was singing. The search team told him he was smart to sing, it helped them find him. He said, that that was not why he was singing. It was so silent, he was singing to prevent going insane! I can't imagine how one would maneuver their way in that darkness, it seems so impossible to me! 

We were instructed not to write on the walls of the caves. However, there is writing to be seen on the caves. When tours first began in the 1800s, they were conducted by slaves. They would get paid by the tourists to write their names on the walls. The guides carried candles and burning torches to light the way for the people touring the caves. The guides and their guests used candle smoke and lantern soot to write their names on the cave ceiling. In many places, we saw these candle smoked writings. 

Candle Smoked Writings

The tour did end with stalactites and stalagmites. They are huge and we saw the "frozen niagara", 75 feetx 50 feet x 15 feet. Under the Niagara, is a beautiful "room" of more of these structures. So much fun to look at and marvel and nature.

Frozen Niagara 

Stalactite Formations

Devil's Bathtub

For Labour Day weekend, we were going to Mammoth Cave National Park. I had read about Devil's Bathtub in a 5 hidden gems of Virginia article. Devil's Bathtub was on the way to Mammoth Cave National Park and it was a perfect place to explore on Friday.

Devil's Bathtub (+36.81768, -82.62490) is in Scott County. When looking it up online, the articles talk about how it isn't a typical hike, lots of scaling rocks and boulders, water crossing and not a well marked path. This is all true, but if you pay attention, you can stay on the path. We went off course once, but not very far, before we realised there were no more markers or a path, we turned around, crossed a bed and were on our way. It was a lot of fun navigating the course, looking for the markers, step stoning and exploring! :)

This is the marker you want to look out for, yellow rectangles on trees:

We were lucky that it had been dry for a few days before our hike. The water crossings didn't have too much water and were fairly easily to cross. From what I read online, one should be prepared to get their feet wet. We didn't have to worry about that much.

Crossing 1

Crossing 2

Crossing 3

Crossing 4

Crossing 5

Crossing 6

Crossing 7

Crossing 8

Crossing 9

Crossing 10

Crossing 11

The path was not necessarily obvious at all times, but there was generally a semblance of a trail. This is the first time we have hiked in the US on a trail like this. It felt more outdoorsy than previous experiences...

 

You know you are on the trail when you see tree trunks chopped away for you like this :)

And after, walking 2 miles, you get treated with this! :)

The water is frigid! We both went in, but to be fully in the water and swim around was difficult and not really possible for too long! I jumped it, and the cold just took my breath away, I swam out so fast!!!! The good thing was that it was so warm outside, that as soon as I was out I was comfortable. I went back and jumped 4 more times. It was hard to resist! 

So much more comfortable being in the water like this than fully submerged! Brrrr

After we enjoyed the pool, we climbed behind and found Devil's Bathtub!!!!

There were a few people there, so it took a while for me to get the photos I wanted. Until then, this was a good spot! :)

Devil's bathtub was so beautiful! Nature has an amazing way of creating the unexpected!

Many Expressions of Beanie

We met Beanie today after over 2 months! She has grown up so much and speaks in sentences. Sigh. Still ridiculously cute as ever!