Mammoth Cave National Park

At the end of October, we headed south to Southern Illinois to participate in the inaugural Shawnee Half Marathon/Marathon.  As Rob did the Libertyville Marathon two weeks earlier, we both opted to do the half-marathon.  It was a nice race, but had a brutally cold wind.  We both managed to finish second in our age groups (it was a small race), with times of 1:47:35 (Rob) and 2:01:58.  I was a bit disappointed when crossing the finish line that I was oh so close to the 2:00:00 mark.  Oh well, I wasn't really expecting to be that close - I guess next time I have a new goal.

 

 

We had a very nice pre-race dinner (included in the race package!) with Aunt Linda and were able to stay with her in Harrisburg.  After the run, we were able to clean up, visit a shop in town, and then headed to Equality to have a late lunch.  After lunch, we went on to Kentucky.  The next morning, we visited Mammoth Cave National Park.

 

We made our cave tour reservations in advance; it was good that we did for it was sold out.  We choose the River Styx tour.

 

 

The tour took the natural entrance down.  It is basically the same as the historic tour, but with a little additional footage to get to the River Styx.  Instead of history, it spoke about Geology (Ranger Sue was excellent).  Instead of 140 people, our tour had a maximum of 40!

 

It quickly got dark, and this is where the pictures end.  No flash photography - so my point-and-shoot just did what it could.  The cave is very large at this end, but not very decorated.  If you want to see decoration, there are tours at another entrance that are much different.  They did explain why...  There is a big sandstone cap over much of the area allowing for very little water leaking in creating the formations over time.  In the other end of the cave, it is a bit different situation allowing for more formations.  So much different a cave from Great Basin (Lehman Cave) which we visited in May.  That cave was small and heavily decorated.

 

This is an image of the bottomless Pit.

 

And much of the historic graffiti that was easily visible throughout the tour (some not so historic).  I am sure that would have been talked about more on the historic tour.

 

Fat Man's Misery was not all that difficult.  The rock here was extremely smooth from the year and years of heavy visitors touching the walls.  It was hard to believe that it was all a natural path and no blasting took place.

The River Styx was not all that impressive at this time of the year, but you did see the water.  At one point in history, boats were taken up and down the river within the cave.  A craw fish was spotted (although I never did see it).

 

After the tour, we continued down the path to see the exit of the River Styx.

When heading back up, we saw a historic tour going down with 140 people...oh man, did that make us happy we took the geology tour with a maximum of 40!