July 14, 2015

Our first stop was Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.  I was there once when I was little- the only thing I remember was the entrance.  Now, they have several tours, and we went on the Domes and Dripstones tour.  (It's in a completely different area than the one I went on as a kid- that tour is now the 'historic tour'... which I guess means my childhood is now far enough away to be history.)  We took a bus several miles to the entrance, then went through some doors and down some narrow, wet, aluminum steps... for a solid 10 minutes.  We had to duck and squeeze through some areas, and the steps went over some deep pits before getting to solid, dry ground.  The picture shows where the steps finally opened up, most of the way it was half this width.  We went through a dry tunnel and ended with an area of stalagtites and stalagmites.  After the cave, we headed south toward Chattanooga, Tennessee (although our campground was in northern Georgia.)  We drove through a bad storm, got ahead of it, and were able to back the camper in and get it leveled before the storm caught up to us.