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.

Underground Tourists

June 6, Friday

We crossed Tennessee in a day and entered Kentucky yesterday afternoon. The terrain is rolling hills then dips. The National Park staff explained that the dips are sinkholes where a cave or cavern has formed in the limestone rock. Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in North America with >360 miles of mapped passages on 7 levels with many more still uncharted.

Last night we went on our first tour, by lantern light, to the Star Chamber. This room got its name in the earliest days of tourism at Mammoth Cave, about 1815, when guides would throw rocks to chip off black gypsum from the ceiling, exposing sparking white “stars”. We also saw the remains of a nitrate mine used for domestic gunpowder manufacture during the War of 1812. Calcium nitrate was mined from the cave soil, leached, piped aboveground and boiled down to precipitate saltpeter, potassium nitrate, then shipped to E.I. DuPont in Delaware for making gunpowder. The nearly 200-year-old wood is perfectly preserved, as are other artifacts left by early Woodland Indians as long as 4000 years ago.

This morning, a wild turkey and a white-tail doe strolled through camp without any notice of or concern for the dogs and us. They must know that they’re protected in the National Park. This afternoon, we’ll tour another deeper and wetter park of the cave, using the “New Entrance” deliberately created when an early cave entrepreneur dropped 26 sticks of dynamite down a sink hole.

Freeway Fliers

June 5, Thursday

We overnighted 25 miles west of Memphis, in far eastern Arkansas. It was over 90 degrees again today, and we again ran both the house and engine air conditioners to stay comfortable. Today might be a couple of degrees cooler, if we’re lucky. We turned on the coach AC at 11AM as we left a gas stop, 42 miles E of Memphis. This was another in a long string of half-tank $150 fill-ups. Gas has been about the same price since NM. At only 7mpg, every few pennies count.

Viewed from the interstate, AR and TN look a lot like the woodlands of my childhood in New England. The stark beauty of the desert SW which I have come to so admire and enjoy is a dry, barren contrast to the lush, watery streams and rivers of this part of the south. With that comes a thick humidity that you can almost cut with a knife this time of year. We have yet to encounter rain, but it must surely come. The gently rolling hills of Tennessee are a joy to see and experience. We turn N at Nashville, heading for Mammoth Cave NP in Southern Kentucky.

Emergency Repairs

June 4, Wed.

We overnighted at Springhill Park in Barling, AR. The park is part of the Army Corp of Engineers Lock and Dam project on the Arkansas River at Ft. Smith. There are lots of Canada geese everywhere, with a number of good-sized goslings. The sign says don’t feed the geese – too bad they’re protected or they could feed us! Ft. Smith is full of historical importance and we wish we could stay to soak it all up. But we’ve got repairs to make. Our engine AC compressor has been making funny noises for thousands of miles, reaching crisis stage on Sunday in Flagstaff, where it started screaming at us. No one could properly diagnose it until Albuquerque. We could not get it replaced there, so we called ahead to Greg’s Too in Ft. Smith and pre-ordered the needed parts. Greg’s guys had us back on the road at 2pm. It was over 90 degrees today, and we had to run both the house and engine air conditioners to stay comfortable. Our longhaired dogs don’t want to be traveling through the south in summer without AC.

Flagstaff, AZ

June 1, Sunday

We finally got started at 1 PM on Saturday, considerably later than planned. (I guess this is normal for us and I shouldn’t get so bothered by our perennial lateness.) We needed to get into Arizona on Saturday and planned to stop near Williams, AZ. An RVer had recommended an area near Coleman Lake on Forest Service lands as a nice boondock campsite. While driving, we set an appointment with our friend Joyce for breakfast 7:30 Sunday morning at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Flagstaff. So, despite the late start, we HAD to make it to Williams for the night. Well, we pulled off the paved road onto a dirt Forest Service road about 11 PM in total darkness, found a wide flat spot and just parked and collapsed into bed. When I took the dogs out, the sky was crystal clear and FULL of stars. We are so hindered by light pollution near the city that we don’t appreciate the beauty of the night sky. In the morning, we saw that we were parked on the edge of a pretty oval meadow with just two other campers barely in sight.

We got up and off to Flagstaff in time for breakfast. We had a great visit with Joyce and caught up on all the news, including the imminent arrival of her first grandchild. We caught her during an overnight stop at home, en route with daughter and her husband from Colorado to San Diego to await baby’s arrival. It was a lucky happenstance for us all to be in Flagstaff that particular morning.

D Day - maybe

Our goal is to be on the road early this afternoon (or after Friday evening rush hour if we miss our earlier target). We'll only drive ~2 hours, maybe to Victorville or Barstow, then overnight and start early in the morning.

Despite weeks of preparation, the to-do list is getting longer, not shorter! It always seems to work that way. Wish us luck in completing the last-minute tasks.

Two weeks and counting ...

Another hot weekend -- temperatures in the nineties. A long-time friend is visiting from Stockholm, so trip preparations must take a distant back seat to catching up and being host. Motorhome insurance renewal came through wrong, again. So much left to do in the next 12 days. I wonder if we'll get it all done before we have to leave. Last night I learned from Jonathan Edwards that he lived on Cape Breton Island years ago. We're hoping to get a chance to see that part of Nova Scotia as well. We'll not ever again be closer.