A Grand, Gloomy and Peculiar Place

A park ranger entertains a captive audience on the Mammoth Cave tour

The Historic Tour Drops through four layers of the Mammoth Cave

Mammoth Cave National Park is on our way through Kentucky.  We acquire a 10 AM tour pass.  405 miles of cave have been mapped with a proposed 600 miles still undiscovered.  This is more than twice the size of the second largest cave system in the world.  I am sure that I must have been here 50 years ago.  And it has features that I recognize... Fat Man's Squeeze and Tall Man's Misery.  But when we get inside the cave, I realize that I've never been here before.  The tour we take goes down 4 of the 5 layers.  The 5th layer is full of water!  This cave - along with other superlatively named landmarks like the Grand Canyon, the Great Prairie, the Mighty Mississippi, and the Giant Sequoia Forrest share a special place in American history when we were taking a place on the world stage with the great European nations with all their pomp and history.
Our visit corresponds with the 200th year since the re-discovery of Mammoth Cave and the 100th year of the National Park Service.