The Next Adventure!!

The months I spent in South Florida were some of the best ever! I know I only posted one time, but that is because I was so incredibly busy all the time. I don't know where the time went, but I do know that the time couldn't have been any sweeter!
Now, I am headed out on my next adventure to MONTANA! Yeah! I can't wait to see Big Sky Country. It took me a while to find a job out there, but I was really blessed just a  few weeks ago to not only find a job, but to find a job in the city that was my #1 choice... Billings.
Oddly enough, I began my last set of travel adventures with the wedding of Katherine and Ken. Well, now almost exactly two years later I began this adventure with Jessica and Chad's wedding. Jessica N. was my good friend from PT school and at Katherine's wedding I introduced her and Chad... and the rest is history. It was so awesome to be able to see them tie the knot. It was an absolutely beautiful wedding.
The other exciting thing was ALL my old roommates came to town for the wedding so it was reunion for us too! I loved seeing them and some other classmates from school. It has definitely been way too long.

On Sunday, I left Atlanta early to begin my trek out to Montana. Dawn is driving with me on this trip and had flown into Atalanta to meet me. I went and got her and we started making our way to our first destination, Mammoth Caves National Park in Kentucky. This is the longest known cave system in the world with 365 mapped miles of cave all interwoven and stacked. They say there are 27 layers of cave extending down 300-400 feet under ground. More and more of the cave is being discovered everyday and about every two years they update the number of miles so if anyone goes to these caves in a couple years let me know what the new number is, okay?
Dawn and I went on two tours. The Mammoth Passage Tour was a lit tour with a lot of history about the caves. It only took us into the cave about 3/4 of a mile. The second tour was a lantern tour, meaning the only light in the cave was the ten lanterns that we carried in. SO COOL!
On the first tour we learned how some of the dirt in the cave was processed and used to make gun powder which helped us be successful in the war of 1812 since the British had stopped our ability to import supplies. When the war ended, however, this very lucrative business ended and the cave owners began to give tours. They have been giving tours for almost 200 years now. The part of the cave we saw on this tour, unlike the one I saw in Arkansas, was dry and had no stalagmites or stalactites. It was just huge, dark, open rooms.

The Star Chamber Tour was the last tour of the day and we, along with our group, were the only people in the cave. Apparently, during the day there are multiple tours going in and out and passing each other. This one, however, was more secluded, and we got to see a section of the cave that is not on any other tour... Gothic Avenue or the Haunted Chamber. Like I mentioned before, this tour was only lit by lantern and was reminiscent of how the early explorers would have seen the caves before electricity. If you wanted to see all the detail of the cave structures I would not recommend this tour, but if you want to have the coolest, creepiest, and most interesting tour at the caves I would recommend waiting till the end of the day for this one. We walked through with two guides. One guide did all the talking and the other one had the job of trying his best to scare all of us. When we would make stops along the trail to get a little lesson about the spot, the quiet guide would wander off into the pitch darkness, and he would be standing in some crack or crevasse down the trail waiting for us to pass by. Freaky! If you let your imagination go you could see some interesting things in the dark places of the cave while the shadows from the swinging lanterns danced on the walls.

Gothic Avenue was the last stop on the tour and the guide asked us to leave our lanterns and he turned on the low lights so we could see this area of the cave where there were some interesting structures and history. This area was still growing and had some columns, and stalactites that were trying to rebuild. All the soot and smoke from years of people visiting with torches harmed the cave and stunted the growth of many structures. They did not have the same ideals of preservation that we do today. In fact, many guides would write the name of the visitors on the ceiling of  the cave with candles for a small fee. There are names written in from 1830. It was pretty cool to see.

At the furthest end of Gothic Avenue, before we turned around to head out, the guide turned off all the lights. Earlier, I had told Dawn about my first cave experience as a little kid and how when the guide turned off the light I was so shocked by the complete and utter darkness that I had to touch my eyes to make sure they were open. This was no different. The blackness is like nothing I have experienced above ground. You can hold your hand right in front of your face and not see a thing, and immediately your ears kick into high gear. You can literally hear everything! Every shuffle of the people.. every drip of water... 
I could not imagine being in there alone. The guide told one story of a man that got lost from his tour years and years ago, and ended up spending 39 hours in the cave. His lantern had long since burnt out, and the man was tapping rocks together when they found him in order to have some sound because the sound of his own heartbeat and blood pulsing through his ears was beginning to drive him crazy.
It is a whole other world under there, and I think its so cool we can experience it for a time. I am thankful for those first explorers. They are definitely braver then me.