You Will Get Covered in Mud
(Mammoth Caves, KY 1997)

When my friend Dave and I were down in the Everglades on our trip to Florida I noticed a reference to Mammoth Caves, Kentucky in a book of national parks. The longest cave system in the world, it has over 300 miles. I knew we were going to St. Louis over Memorial Day weekend for the Gateway 300 CART auto race, so I suggested that a stop there on the way home might be cool, and Dave concurred.

Back home I went up on the internet to find info on the caves. I seems you can't wander in them by yourself, but instead they offer over a dozen ranger led tours. They range from a short 1 mile tour to the 6 hour, 5 1/2 mile Wild Cave Tour. The basic synopsis of the Wild Cave Tour was as follows:

Wild Cave Tour - This 6 to 6 1/2 -hour, 5 1/2-mile, extremely strenuous trip is offered to adults 16 years old and older. Crawl, climb, and squeeze through small passages and openings and tight holes off traditional tour routes. The trip begins at the Carmichael Entrance and winds its way to Snowball Room through a variety of passages that the participant will find interesting and challenging. Participants will need to bring lunch and a small bottle of water. Lunch may also be purchased at the Snowball Room (seasonally). The only rest room along the route is located at the Snowball Room. After lunch, the group will investigate a series of canyons that include the Cathedral Domes, a dramatic series of vertical shafts. These canyons lead to an area in which the group will navigate by climbing and crossing chasms. The trip will eventually exit through the Frozen Niagara section. All wild cave trips introduce visitors to safe caving techniques, cave geology, cave mapping, and the history of Mammoth Cave exploration.

Participants must have a chest size of no larger than 42 inches anyone larger will not fit through the tight spaces. Wild cavers should wear clothes that can be torn or soiled. Required for the trip are sturdy shoes or boots, long-sleeved shirt, and long, sturdy pants (jeans are best). Kneepads are provided, but participants may bring their own rollerblade-type or hard plastic kneepads not allowed. Gloves recommended. Helmets and lights are provided.

While the other tours looked interesting, the Wild Cave Tour somehow struck a chord with my manliness. Especially after being too physically exhausted to finish my second dive while down in Florida (see that story for more on that), I felt that I had to re-assert my physical prowess. So with some intrepidation I booked the Wild Cave Tour for Memorial Day 1997.

The auto race was on Saturday in St. Louis and Sunday we left for the park. We arrived on Sunday afternoon, got a campsite and pitched our tent. Usually we stay in motels, but since we were at a park... you know, when in Rome do as the Roman's do, plus it saved us a bit of money. After pitching the tent we walked around a bit on the trails, but to be honest the scenery above ground in not all that spectacular. Looks just like regular woods. So we hopped in the car and headed toward Cave City, about 10 miles away, with the hopes of killing the evening. Immediately we realized we were in Tackyville, USA with dozens of tourist traps along the way. Don't get me wrong though, I like tacky tourist traps, and the first, Big Mikes, did not disappoint.

Big Mike's sold rocks mostly. Geoites I think there called, the ones with the purple crystal stuff inside. They also sold various minerals and such, some shaped into bookends. Also there were some neat chunks of red translucent stuff that we thought were some cool mineral until they told us they were actually big chunks of leftover glass from a glass factory in West Virginia. Why they told us that I'm not sure since they seemed far less interesting once we found out they weren't natural. Either they were honest, or to them they were just as cool as the natural minerals. What really caught our eye though was the entrance to Big Mike's Mystery House, promising us something INCREDIBLE, for only a dollar. Not to pass up a chance to see small town America in action (and get a good laugh) we parted with our buck and took the tour having no idea what we would see.

The tour was led by some local teenager who unlocked the door and led us into.... Spencer Gifts! Well it wasn't really Spencer Gifts (for those who don't know, Spencer's is a national chain of shops in malls that sells all sorts of tacky gifts such as black light posters, lava lamps, Budweiser signs, body oils and more) but it could have been. Bathed in black light the walls was covered in glowing posters and other items that moved around generating optical illusions. On variously tables were lava lamps, those electrical balls that have static charges that move when you touch them, holograms and various other knick-knacks. Our 'tour guide' described them each as if they were some rare artifacts from a far distant land. After the Spencer’s part the floors became uneven as in a haunted house and we entered what was actually a pretty neat room set up with optical illusions. They had some of the standards, pool balls and water that ran up hill and a room that was larger on one side with different sized windows giving the illusion that once person was a giant and the other tiny. Somebody actually did put a little work into setting that up, and it was interesting. After we exited felt I had to give the kid a buck tip, he did take a picture of us after all.

After Big Mike's we did an alpine slide. There's a concrete luge track in the side of a hill and you get in a little plastic luge and barrel your way down. Lot's of ski resorts used to have them until the lawyers realized they could get rich suing the resorts every time a kid fell off and banged his head. I guess they don't have lawyers yet in the middle of Kentucky. (which tends to indicate that the people of Kentucky may be a lot smarter then society gives them credit for)

We killed the rest of the night seeing a movie. We were going to go to a bar and have a drink until we found out that the county was dry! I had no idea dry counties still existed in this country.

The next morning we met our group. I was very relieved to find out that most of the people looked normal, not some super muscular athletes. But then again I figured the warnings about how hard and strenuous the tour was were exaggerated anyway. Turns out they weren't. I brought along a fanny pack with a little lunch and my $300 Minolta 35mm SLR camera. I thought I was going to get some good touristy pictures. I wasn't. We had 13 people plus the guide. There were two 20 something girls who were travelling occupational therapists (whatever that is) that we struck up good conversation with. There also were 4 Polish people from Chicago that spoke very good Polish but not very good English, a 50 year old man and his sons, plus a couple more. We donned hard hats with lights and kneepads as the guide re-iterated how strenuous the tour was.

After a short bus ride we entered the cave and walked down a tourist path for a while and then stopped in the middle. It was kind of neat; the passages were encrusted with gypsum and with only our headlamps to guide us was kind of eerie. Our guide then described how we were going to learn how to do some belly crawls through some narrow passages and then told us to follow him as he disappeared into a small crack in the side of the cave. Seriously the opening could have been no bigger then two feet in diameter, and we all starred at each other like this was some sort of a joke. But the guide had disappeared into the crevice and we had no choice but to follow. With packs in front of us we squeezed through the opening and wiggled our way down the passage getting covered in loose red clay. Caving is not for those who are claustrophobic. With occasional rests in huge 3 foot high chambers (at least they seemed huge after those crawls) the first couple of hours was more of the same. Eventually we came to the Snowball Room, a large room with tables and bathrooms where we ate lunch. The 50 year old man took the elevator there up at that point, he was complaining of shortness of breath.

The second half we went to a more active part of the cave as we walked down narrow passageways at the bottom of 200' high breathtaking chasms. Water was dripping everywhere and we found ourselves having to crawl through small pools of water. The red clay that covered us soon turned into a thick layer of mud. My poor camera was covered in the stuff. We climbed under over and though these chasms. At one point Dave and one other guy took a wrong turn and got lost. It took about 15 minutes for them to find us again. We eventually came out on an old tourist trail from the 20's that we followed for some time. Interestingly, in the first half of the tour everyone was cheerful and talkative. By this point there was hardly any talking amongst us. We took the trail to a point where an upper chamber had collapsed into a lower chamber. We actually climbed up the collapsed rocks for a hundred feet or so and eventually got back to a tourist trail that led us out.

As we exited, a group on one of the tourist tours was waiting to enter. We came out with hard hats and lights, covered in a mixture of mud, sweat, and water that made for quite a site. After dropping off the lights and kneepads (we got to keep the hat) Dave and I (along with many others) headed straight to the showers. My shoes were so bad I had to take them into the shower with me to get them clean. That night we ate at the Outback Steakhouse, and let me tell you after 6 hours of stooping, bending, crawling and climbing, steak and a good beer taste real good.

It might sound like the tour wasn't fun. Quite the contrary, the Wild Cave Tour at Mammoth Caves ranks as the most fun I have ever had at a single tourist attraction (beating out the catacombs in Paris). Though I almost ruined a $300 camera and a pair of shoes and was still sore from the outing days later I saw and did things that I probably would have never experienced otherwise. And there was a definite sense of accomplishment knowing that I did it.