There is so much preserved history at Mammoth Cave National Park - it's any nerd's dream land.
The visitors center offers free information sessions and all the rangers are really friendly. We asked one ranger which cave tour he would recommend if he could only do one on his visit. He recommended the historic cave tour, so we signed up for the noon tour to kill a few hours during the heat of the day.
Ranger Steve was our guide.
He had all kinds of puns up his sleeve.
The cave was much much cooler than above ground, about 30 degrees cooler in fact.
We descended the stairs leading into what is called the "historic entrance" of the caves. We weren't sure if we'd make it out, so we took a photo to preserve our memory just in case.
It turns out, spelunking is pretty spectacular. I hadn't been in a cave since high school and I felt my inner kid rising up to the surface.
It helped that Ranger Steve told us all kinds of ghost stories and kept turning out the cave lights to show us what it must have been like for the first explorers of the caverns.
We squeezed through tight passages, ducked through low tunnels, and wove our way down to 310 feet below the Earth's surface.
We even found life down there.
That tiny thing is a bat. The type that lives here is quite small. Ranger Steve called them chicken nuggets with wings.
Eventually, we made it out alive.
All the southern history we were exposed to gave us a hankering for corn bread. So we put together a little experiment...corn bread in a skillet on the camp stove!
I'm not going to tell you it was the best cornbread I've ever made, cause that would be a lie. It was, however, edible and with some honey on top it wasn't half bad. Except for the bottom. The bottom was burnt. It was worth a shot though! And it certainly put Alex in the country spirit.
Soon we'll leave Kentucky behind for the long haul to North Carolina.
I can't believe we're almost to our new home! I'll tell all about it in Day 9!
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