Hannah, Grace and I had planned for this trip months ago after mom and Grace visited Mammoth Cave. Their stories just tempted Hannah and I to make the trip there, and we would have done so if not for my surprise to the ER :(
Anyway, there was no better time to go camping at Mammoth Cave than on my birthday! Grace picked Hannah up from her work on Friday evening. When I got home, we packed all the stuffs in the car, and we were ready to set off. The plan was to spend a night in a motel, so that we can beat the traffic in Chicago, and then start driving slowly down to Mammoth Cave on Saturday. It was an uneventful evening in the motel, and we were ready for bed after a 4-hour drive.
On Saturday morning, after a horrible cup of local-motel coffee, we decided that we needed to get another "breakfast" from McDonald's. I was waiting in the car when Hannah and Grace came back with what they described as "a crap ton of McDonald's breakfast burritos" because they were patient with the server when the credit card machine broke :) We were on our way after a quick breakfast.
We stopped at the Falls of the Ohio State Park in Indiana. It has the largest, naturally exposed fossil beds, and the "falls" were originally a series of rapids allowing the Ohio River to drop 26 feet over a distance of 2.5 miles. However, today, much of the original falls are behind the McAlpine Dam. We took the dogs for a quick dip in the river, and were back on the road to Mammoth Cave.
We arrived at Mammoth Cave, and it was around 4pm when we finished setting up our tents. Hannah did ALL the cooking on this trip, and her culinary skills kept us well-fed. Hannah and I are still in a ongoing process of setting up the ultimate "camping kit", so there are always things that we need but are not in the kit - and this time, we did not have a spatula to cook the burger patties. Luckily, Grace exhibited great VanLaanen "MacGyver" skills, and made Hannah a spatula from a fork and a cut-out from a beer can! We had dinner, went to bed at 9pm, and planned to go running tomorrow!
I woke up at 7am (Saturday), but Hannah was already gone! She had woken up even earlier than me, and went for a short run (~3miles). I was making coffee when she came back all happy with her run, gleaming with joy from the great run in the early hours of the morning.
We had breakfast, rested for a bit, and off we went for our 10-mile run. We had to drive to the back-country of the park, and we had to cross a river to get there - we drove onto a small platform boat, and just motored across the river slowly :) It was a really nice day for a long run, with sun peeking through the clouds, and the temperature wasn't too warm. The run was good, finished the day with more beer and burgers, and ready for Mammoth Cave adventure tomorrow!
We put the dogs in a special kennel at Mammoth Cave Hotel when we went on the cave tour. It is the cheapest kennel we ever been to! It was about $7.50 for about 5 hours for both the dogs. The tour was about 4 hours, and the tour guide warned everyone that it is going to be quite a long walk with lots of stairs, and people should seriously think about whether they are fit enough. No one dropped out before or during the tour, but along the way, we noticed that there were definitely some people who clearly should not be on this tour! The cave is huge, and is the longest cave system in the world, currently measuring 405 miles. There were some great features such as the gypsum flowers, stone formations etc. The experience was great, and definitely worth a visit - made Hannah and I wanting to go to Florida and Mexico for cave diving again! :P By the time we finished the tour, picked up the dogs, went to visit the other cave entrance etc, it was nearly 4pm, and we started our drive back to Chicago... until next time, caves...
