Caving and More Caving

June 7, Saturday

Our descent into the new entrance was peculiar, to say the least. A path through the woods leads to an open area and a large, locked metal door set into the side of a sinkhole. Through the door, we descended many steps into a large, dry passageway. In several places, water from above dripped on us and ran down the cave walls. After about two miles of passage and many ramps and steps, we reached the star attraction of this part of the cave. The Frozen Niagara formation is one of the few examples of flowstone in the cave. This is the only public area with stalactites and stalagmites. It was distressing to see how many were broken. Over a hundred years of tourism during private ownership certainly took its toll. (We were stuck by the contrast with Kartchner Caverns, in a state park near Benson, AZ, which we toured about 5 years ago. This is also a wet living cave but recently opened to the public and fiercely protected. Every formation is pristine.) Our concerns about having to ascend the entry steps were relieved – the exit was just a short ascent from the Frozen Niagara and out a different metal door set in a hillside.

The cave is 54 degrees and the air temperature was at least a very humid 90 degrees! What a contrast! We quickly were covered in sweat and found it hard to breathe. When we got back to the coach, we HAD to turn on the generator and air conditioning to cool down again. All the park staff complained about the unseasonable heat which has followed us across the country.

This morning we took our final cave tour, the Historical Tour using the historic entrance. We retraced a little of the same path as our first tour, as far as the saltpeter mill works, then turned off to a different part of the cave. We followed passages discovered and named by Stephen Bishop, a black slave tour guide of the 1830’s – 50’s. He reportedly crossed Bottomless Pit after laying down a log and shimmying along it over a huge chasm. We walked across on a metal bridge. We entered at the bottom of Mammoth Dome then climbed 249 steps to exit near the top of the chamber, a feat impossible in historic tours. There were many examples of historic graffiti, names and inscriptions made by candle smoke on the cave ceiling. One passage, River Walk, occasionally floods during wet springs and had damp soil underfoot; the guide said that last month it held 5 feet of water and has been completely flooded with up to 12 feet at times. One passage is named Tall Man’s Misery – we had several hundred feet of low ceiling that we had to stoop-walk under. Another passage is Fat Man’s Misery, a narrow twisty passage formed by fast-moving water.

After finishing the tour, we broke camp and drove across Kentucky into Ohio. We were lucky to be traveling on a weekend. There were many road work projects suspended for the weekend and traffic through Louisville and Cincinnati was very light. We stopped south of Columbus in a very rural area at a nice campground. Tomorrow we’ll aim for Erie, PA then on into New York, specifically Niagara Falls on Monday.