Mammoth Cave and a cruise to Nashville

October 24
We left Rough River and headed south towards Mammoth Cave National Park. Much has been made about Mammoth reopening their accessible cave tour. We needed to get the stamp for our national park passport book and of course see the cave.

 Some cool vehicles in the parking lot. Someday I will have a Jeep like this for my dolly rig behind a driver RV.

 The handicap accessible tour is given once a day at 12:30. It wasn't cheap either. Forty dollars for the three of us and that was with the park access pass discount. We lined up in our vehicles outside of the visitors center and convoyed over to the elevator. The accessible tour was closed fourteen years ago because the elevator would get stuck. The elevator dropped us into the Snowball Room where lunch was served until 2012. The elevator was used until then to move food and trash out of the cave. It would frequently get stuck and when we rode it, there was a box of food and water and other supplies in case it stopped again.

The snowballs

Across the room from the snowballs was the local billboard. The names appeared to be painted on but in reality were painstakingly applied with a beef tallow candle. Some of the large heavy names took hours to apply and each was formed with the small dot of soot from the candle's flame. 

O-H-I-O!

These gypsum deposits continue to grow in the cave. This delicate curl is about the size of a silver dollar. The gypsum once hung like a beard and swayed in the wind when someone walked by but that was when the cave was fist being explored in the 1800s.

We left the cave slightly disappointed because it wasn't as cool as some. There were no incredible formations like Carlsbad and the tour was quite short no more than a half a mile walking on a paved path. It was billed as two hours but didn't last that long. The guide did an excellent job of telling the history and explaining the formation of the cave and its delicate features. I carried my own flashlight to help illuminate the photos and because well you can never have to many back up lights in a cave.
From the cave we went south and the GPS took us to this on the edge of the park.

We decided to backtrack and go out a different route. I'm not sure we would have fit.We rolled down south to Nashville and stayed at Two Rivers Campground near the Grand Ole Opry.

This campground was pretty nice with paved sites or small gravel. The bathrooms were labeled with handicap accessible signs but they were not. Our definition of handicap accessible means I can get into it and use the shower or toilet. A five foot turning radius in each and grab bars. This had none of that. It must have been old people accessible.