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Happy Labor Day everyone! I spent the awesome labor day weekend in Mammoth Cave, KY and Nashville, TN. It was a wonderful trip and I like both places a lot! In terms of photos, it's so hard to take photos in the cave since it's too dark and tripod is not allowed. I had to sacrifice the ISO to make the shutter speed fast. Now all the photos are having a lot of noise :( Anyway, I will try my best to process them.
There is much wildlife activity that takes place in the hardwood forests and biomes above the extensive caverns of Mammoth Caves National Park.
This doe didn't give her fawn, the speckled deer, much of an opportunity to nurse. You can see the doe pulling away as soon as her fawn tries to suckle. I'm guessing the fawn is already being weaned. It grazed on foliage instead.
Most of the cave tour is in these huge open spaces, which get lit up as you approach. We only saw a couple of sections that water seeps through (second pic) which keeps most of the cave free of stalagmites and stalactites. There was one short section that we had to duck and squeeze through and around the rock walls, but most of the tour was as easy as could be.
The counselor is perhaps better equipped for his task, if he has experienced personal difficulties, problems, doubts and fears, even a sense of guilt and failure, perplexity and distress, but has come through to peace, both spiritually and emotionally. - Derek Bingham
This was the last part of the "easy" tour. It was not mandatory to go down as the group would go down to see the immediate area and then climb back up to this spot. There were stairs on other parts of this tour, but not too bad.
Mammoth Cave, 426 miles discovered so far. This is the longest cave in the world, and is still today being explored. They believe there may be possibly another 600 miles yet to be discovered and excavated.
water was flowing from the ceiling, about 40 feet up, and into a pit in the back of the Frozen Niagara cave...the water was not collecting but flowing into cracks that took the water deeper underground,
One of the stops along the Historic Tour at Mammoth Cave National Park. This is the "Giant's Coffin," a 1,000 ton boulder that is 48 feet long and 20 feet high. Many early visitors to the cave carved or wrote their names on the rock, and it is covered with graffiti from the 1800s. The tour guides pointed out that any markings made before the cave was protected as a National Park is considered historic graffiti, anything carved afterwards is considered a felony.
Along the Frozen Niagara tour, at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.
The next morning we were to do our third and final tour at Mammoth Cave. We were just chilling and relaxing after breakfast when we checked the time and with a shock saw that our tour started in 30 minutes. And it was a 30 minute drive to the Visitor Center.
So we rushed to the park, driving as fast as possible on the rural roads. The tour we were going on that morning was the Frozen Niagara tour, and unlike the other tours this one requires a short ride on a bus to a different access point to the cave. When we finally arrived at the Visitor Center parking lot, we saw the last few members of our tour group boarding the bus. We hopped out of the car and ran, just as the bus started to drive away. We frantically waved, and amazingly the bus stopped for us. I hated being one of those people who was so late that we had to stop the bus, but I was thankful that we were able to jump on at the literal last second.
Mammoth Cave is known for its immense size, and not for cave formations. But one of the few places where formations like stalagmites and stalactites have formed is along the Frozen Niagara tour. It is one of the most popular tours in the park, and for good reason. It was definitely the most interesting tour that we did. Also it was a smaller tour group, so it didn't fell like you were being herded along with the crowd.