2015 Road Trip: Part 6 (Mammoth Caves)

Five States, Mammoth Caves, 800 miles
Day 10
4.23.15

Little did I know that today would be an extremely long day.  But filled with truly spectacular things, as well as some mediocre ones.  I began the day in Hoosier National Forest just south of Bloomington, IN, after my second night at the horse camp.  The Hickory Ridge fire tower was a few miles from the campsite down the gravel road, so I was looking forward to catching a sunrise from the top, being so close.  It took awhile to actually find it since signage is not great 'round these parts.  I pulled up to it, and it was the largest tower I've seen so far on the trip.  It was built in 1936, and was one of 8 towers in the Hoosier NF.  Now this is the only one remaining.  And for the first time ever, the cabin was open to the public!  Finally somewhere not so sketchy to stand to watch the sunrise.  It was very cold, compared to the 70s I had seen over the past few days, so I had to break out the hat and mittens for proper camera operation.

I was able to watch the sky go from a dark glow, to a bright pink and orange, to the sun finally breaking across the trees, and then fully emerging.  I'll just leave one picture so you can get a sense of it.

Sunrise from Hickory Ridge Fore Tower

As I was waiting for the sun to come up, two students from IU made their way up to view the sunrise as well.  It was nice to share the experience with them.  (If you two are following the blog, this is the post for you!)

I began the drive down to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, which I have heard many great things about, but never had the chance to see.  I love this about my trip - I am able to actually go see things, instead of eternally wishing to go see them.  On my way south, I found my first dose of endlessly straight roads.  Ohio was flat and straight, but there were stoplights every so often.  But here, you can go for a long time without seeing an intersection.  I was initially dreading these parts of the trip, but they are freeing in a way.  The vastness of these roads and landscapes allows you to feel more open.

This openness ended abruptly with Louisville traffic.  The highway around this area is very interesting though, because it winds through the hills that make up this area of the "Appalachians" if you want to stretch that definition enough.

Welcome to Kentucky!

Soon, I was exiting the highway to go to Mammoth Caves!  I also realized that I had crossed over into Central Time, and because part of Kentucky is in Eastern, and part in Central, they label all the times for everything with the time zone.  This was kind of them for foreigners like myself.  I browsed the different tours you can do there to explore bits of the cave system, and decided to go on two, which allowed me to see around 3 miles total of underground awesomeness.  One thing to realize about this cave system, is there is nearly 400 miles of human-passable cave network that is all interconnected.  Meaning you could go underground, and go through 400 miles without seeing sunlight.

One drawback to the cave tours here is that they don't allow flash photography.  This is disappointing because everything comes out a bit shaky, but it also means that to actually get a good view of it, you have to go, and nothing compares to actually seeing it and being there.  I took my camera on a tour called Domes and Dripstones, led by a super cool dude named Bobby.  I liked this tour a lot because it was pretty narrow, and it was focused more on the geology of the cave.  Aside from the entrance and exits, the caves here are completely dry, which means that stalactites and stalagmites won't form.  The caves are dry because of a sandstone "roof" over the top, which shields the water from seeping through, and dissolving the limestone to create the stalactites.  Some caves don't have the sandstone layer on top, so those will form more interesting formations.  Instead, we got to see narrow channels, a few deep pits, and dripstone, which I'll explain in a moment.

The way these caves form is from above, where the land is riddled with tens of thousands of sinkholes.  These allow rainwater to enter below the sandstone.  From here, with lots of time, the water can dissolve pathways through the limestone, and these passageways eventually lead to the Green River.  This river has carved its way down through layers of earth over time, meaning that the water from the underground caves can drain into it as it gets lower.  We entered the cave in a sinkhole, then exited along a slope, where water would have at one point drained into the Green River.

Toward the end of this tour, we saw the "Frozen Niagara Falls".  It looks like a frozen waterfall, but it's all made from limestone which has solidified as water seeped out and deposited the limestone on the already existing seepage.  Bobby told us that it took roughly 100 years to create one inch of limestone thickness here.  This is what we call the dripstone.  We were allowed to have a look from the bottom of the "falls" which gave this sweet picture below:

Dripstone at Frozen Niagara Falls

 The way everything is lit in the cave accentuates all the features we saw, especially ones like this.  This is a dormant feature, so it no longer seeps, but the fins that hang down from the dripstone must have been over six feet long.

Here we see a little bit of seepage, where mini stalactites and stalagmites have formed.  (I remember the difference between these because stalaCtite are on the Ceiling, and stalGmites are on the Ground.)

I went on the Historic Tour, which was much larger, with passageways exceeding 30 feet in diameter.  Of course, I forgot my camera in the car for this one.  This allowed me to experience it more personally though, since it's easy to "miss the cave" has Bobby said, if you take too many pictures.

We saw a huge ancient saltpeter mine in a part of the cave called the Rotunda.  It looked like something out of Harry Potter to be honest - this huge dome area that was nearly a half an acre in size.  From there, we followed the pathways through Fat Man's Misery, where you have to duck, and the walkway is tightly bordered by rock.  This led to the the infamous Mammoth Dome, which now has a huge staircase going up from the bottom.  This dome is 192 feet tall, and there are channels into which you can peer down from the stairs.

The first tour was much nicer since we only had a small group of less than 20 or so, but I am glad to have done both tours, because I got to see both the narrow tight caves as well as the larger ones.  The large caves felt like a movie theater with the way that they've lit the pathway with amber lighting.  One amazing thing they did on the tours is to have us gather round, then turn off all the lights.  You can see NOTHING, not even after your eyes adjust.  There is no difference with your eyes open on closed.  You can hear nothing (assuming we were quite like we were supposed to be).  It was a surreal experience.  Bobby then turned on a dim LED and the cave looks very different this way compared to the standard lighting.  It makes me want to try spelunking, because this is what it looks like - just helmet lights.

After emerging into the outside world again, everyone's eyes hurting I'm sure, I had decided I wanted to drive into either Missouri or Arkansas by the end of the day.  I hadn't found a place I could camp for free yet, so I went to Central City, KY for some internet mooching, and a food resupply.  I was an adequate distance from Lake between the Lakes, in western KY, so I headed there where I would cook some dinner, and then continue after that until I became too tired.  Here is a glimpse of the setting sun (or its glow at least) on Kentucky Lake.  It was a great place to have some dinner.  Five stars.

Sunset glow over Kentucky Lake

From this point on, you might as well stop reading, because all that happened is I drove for another 7 hours from Kentucky, western Tennessee, through the south tip of Missouri, and then across most of Arkansas to this strange point on Lake Ouachita.  I stopped to fill up with gas, acquire some caffeine, and scrape bugs off my windshield.

After 814 miles, I finally arrived at this camp called Big Firs CG, where I didn't really see any firs.  Nor was there a flat place to set up a tent, so I took a place that was as flat as I could find.  It was 3:30am, and by the time I set up the tent, I had seen 24 hours, if you account for the time zone change.  Something about that is exciting on its own.

Below is my progress map for Day 10.  With 814 miles added to the total, I've driven 2464 miles so far.  (The map isn't perfectly accurate, I'm realizing.  I'm calculating mileage from the odometer.) Westward I go!