Today started with the alarm going off at 6 AM. Ugh. Retirement means you only set an alarm on vacation (there went any sympathy). We needed to make it to our tour at Mammoth cave at 8:45 AM.
The River Styx tour took us from the top to the bottom of Mammoth cave, which is 400 miles of caves that basically are now dry underground streams that drained water from one side of a plateau to the Green River on the other side. A cap of sandstone and flint kept the upper levels from eroding away leading to its enormous size but kept water from leaking in, leading to a near total absence of all the formations you associate with caves. In other words, we walked two and a half miles of dry creek beds, just under ground. At the bottom we came to an actual wet creek, AKA the River Styx. Then we turned around and walked back out. We only got to hear the Charon waterfall, but we did get to see a sunken boat in the creek, 350 below ground.
I made it through Fat Man’s Misery which was more like Svelte Man’s Discomfort until I came to the spot where the floor abruptly rose and then it was Old Man’s Stumble. In some ways the highlight of the tour was our guide, Greg.
