Bourbon, bluegrass, and a giant cave system, welcome to Kentucky! The first thing I usually do when I get somewhere new is head to the campsite, set up my tent, and figure out a loose game plan for my current location. Well, when I got to the tent portion in Mammoth Cave National Park Campground, my routine came to a halt. One of my tent poles had cracked and wouldn’t stay in its designated home. I tried all my engineering skills to fix it, and actually had the whole tent up with a stick brace, until I put the last little hook on and it all came crashing down. The end of the pole had actually cracked off. Luckily, I had decided to throw my old, crappy tent into my car. I set it up and hoped any rain would lay off for the next couple nights, which it did! And, thanks to REI’s return policies, I was able to pick up a brand new tent for no charge at my next stop. Crisis averted.

Anyway, Mammoth Cave National Park, very neat. The cave system is the longest in the world, at 405 total miles. It gets its name from the humongous “rooms” within the system. You have to take one of the number of tours in order to enter the caves so I did the historic one (on recommendation from a friend, thanks Haley!). It was really quite a spectacle to see and the tour guide actually had a lot of interesting information about how the cave was formed, how it was discovered, and the activities that used to take place inside. There are extremely narrow and tight areas you have to crawl your way through and again, giant areas that seem to go on forever. Unfortunately, white nose syndrome has wiped out a majority of the once thriving bat population in the caves and the national park is taking measures to stop the spread of the fungus, but they are admittedly losing the battle. Outside of the caves, the above ground portions of the park are also beautiful,  I took a few hikes both inside and out of the caves and really enjoyed both. I would definitely recommend this park for a weekend trip, or even a day trip down from Louisville.

On a side note for all you Mentor Cardinals reading this, Senor Bolton, an old Mentor High Spanish teacher, works at the national park visitor center. I recognized him right away and asked if he was the same guy. He responded that he was, said he retired, and then turned his back to me. Apparently, he’s still kind of an ass!