THURSDAY 15^th OCTOBER 2009

I went to Mammoth Cave today with some of my Owensboro friends Ann Marie, John and Andy.  Ann Marie picked me up at 8.45 in the morning then we got Andy then John before we headed on our way.  I was the car DJ so I put on my ipod and sang along to the Backstreet Boys and *NSync.  Anne Marie loves boy bands too and Andy sang along.  It was fun.  I even got them liking Cold Chisel.  LOL!  John brought doughnuts which we were very happy about.  I gave Andy and Ann Marie a koala pencil that Emma had given me when I was in Chicago, and I gave John a kangaroo hatpin.  They’ve been so good to me since I’ve been here I thought I should give them something. 

We had a fun day.  It was a 2 hour drive there so we got to Mammoth cave around 11.30am and checked out the different tours.  We organised to do the Mammoth Cave tour at 12.45pm and bought a ticket for the Niagara Cave tour (called something like that) at 4.30pm.

We checked out a couple of gift shops beforehand.  I finally bought a hatpin.  Woo!

We walked around and down some paths and did a couple of short walks before our tour.  It was drizzling and cold outside so we rugged up. 

We passed a cemetery and a lot of trees which were the colour of Autumn, or I should say “Fall”.  Beautiful orange, red, yellow and green leaves.  It was nice but it probably would have been better on a sunny day to really emphasize the tones.

At 12.45pm we were met at the bus stop outside the visitor information centre by our tour guide, Joe.  He was quite old and he talked slowly like we were all students trying to make sense of a subject.  He was nice enough but I wish he spoke faster.  I think the tour lasted longer because he was stretching it out with his drawn out sentences.

The Mammoth Cave tour went for about an hour or so and there wasn’t a great deal to see except for a big cave.  We only went to the first main bit where Joe talked about the caves history and how a lot of the man-made bits were constructed by slaves back in the 1800’s, I think he said.  Some of the sediment etc was used by a man to make gunpowder for the war.  Interesting!  It’s the biggest cave in the world with about 370 caves within or surrounding it.  Or something like that.  They have only explored 111 or so.

There wasn’t much beauty to the first tour.  It was basically a history tour.

After that we had lunch at the café there.  Our waitress was extremely polite and very chirpy.  It seems a lot of people are like that in Kentucky.  All “Yes Maam” and “Thankyou very much, you’re very welcome” etc.

After lunch we had a couple of hours to kill so we went for a drive after I bought postcards and more hatpins from the gift shop.  It may have been my only chance to get souvenirs so I wasn’t passing up the opportunity.

We ended up driving around and found another short walk to go on which was cool.  The best bit was on our way back when we saw 2 deer at the side of the road then 4 deer in the car park.  I took photos of them and at one point followed the four deer into the woods and got some video footage.  It was great.  They crossed the road in front of the car.  It was like the moose in ‘Northern exposure’ except with deer.  They weren’t bothered at all.

The Niagara tour was much better.  We had to get a bus that looked like one of those yellow school buses you see in movies (except it was green) to the cave entrance.  Our tour guide, Jackie, was much better.  He talked faster, probably because he was younger than Joe by about 30 years at least, and he got straight to the point.  He was telling us the cave was really long and it was hard to get to back in the day, but a man who owned land above it (and owned a lot of dynamite) decided to blow up the back of the cave and made his own back entrance so he could start his own tours, which of, course caused problems with the people who originally discovered the cave.  Law suits ensued but he won and it became a popular entrance until the war and depression.  Later, Kentucky people started buying up the land and they donated it to the national park so it’s now all run by the government and there are many different caves and entrances.  Or so the story goes (if I remember it properly?). 

We saw stalagmites and stalagtites, along with signatures written on the walls from back in the early days when the rich man used to charge people so they could leave their mark on the cave.  It doesn’t happen any more as it’s not good for the cave walls. 

Jackie and Joe also mentioned how carbonized water had caused the cavities in the caves.  Carbon-dioxide in water is used in fizzy drinks so if it can create holes in caves over time, imagine what it does to our stomachs?

I took some nice photos of us squeezing through holes as we walked around the cave.  I think it may have been called Niagara cave due to a rock formation that looked like a waterfall.  Nobody mentioned it but it just occurred to me.  There was no water there that I could see. 

The tour went for about an hour and we enjoyed it much more than the first one so it was worth the wait.

After it finished we grabbed a drink and headed home.  I tried mellow yellow.  It was O.K but not as good as Mountain Dew.  All that talk of carbonized water made me thirsty.

It was good to get out of Owensboro for the day.  Hopefully I’ll head to Evansville on Saturday with my good friend Liz and get my bus ticket to St Louis.  It should be fun.

So there’s my update.  Hope the monologue didn’t bore you.

I’m a little homesick tonight.  It’s hard not being able to contact people easily.