My post for Sunday 8-16-09 day two of our family vacation to Mammoth Cave


We had to get up early (before 8 a.m.) to get dressed and eat breakfast so we could make it to Mammoth Cave for our 11:30 departure time for the "New Entrance" tour. It was pretty cool not only is the inside of the cave about 55 degrees year round but the tour we took "The New Entrance Tour" was really cool. We took a bus ride over to the "New Entrance" witch was blasted out in the 1930's. We had to go through an "air lock" to enter the cave. We went through a large metal door in groups of 25, down a metal staircase and through another large metal door. Mike said it was like an episode of "Lost" the park rangers would send a group down and they would disappear. Once inside the cave we descended narrow metal stairs down though the shafts of the cave. We could look down the sides and sometimes see the people below us and sometimes just see down into pitch black holes. We walked across grating like cat walks...with handrails of course. It was very impressive. Up until 1968 they had wooden stairs...I can only imagine how treacherous that must have been. In the early 90's they replaced the steps with the nice new metal ones. I am in awe of the workers that replaced the steps, I hope they were paid well.
Unfortunately we do not have any photos (except for a few on our phones) of that trip into the cave. We read the sign outside the building that said NO Camera cases and thought that they did not want us to take our cameras into the cave. Then as we were about to depart we learned (too late) that we could take cameras but not any bags or cases. I didn't have any deep secure pockets so I'm not sure what I would have done with a camera while walking down all those stairs.
Later in the day after we returned from the first hike we took a self guided tour into the "Historic Entrance" with our camera, but the pictures were not that great. Here are the stairs leading down to the mouth of the cave. It was in the low 90's and as we neared the mouth of the cave it felt like someone had turned the A. C. on. We could feel the 55 degree air blowing up out of the cave and it was quite refreshing.