So there was a Wednesday between the field days on Tuesday and Thursday last week. How to spend it? Well there was a company wide corporate conference in the morning that told us about many new things going on in the Land of Liquid. Here we are being good employees and tuning in. Proof of attendance for John, Jourdan and Quinten. And me too.
Hey, why not go visit one of the Earth's biggest holes: Mammoth Cave. It was pretty close. So we did. The part we visited was discovered in 1921 by a guy named George Marshall who noticed a depression and cool air coming out of the ground. It was a few miles from the historic Mammoth Cave entrance. We had to go down some stairs to get to the entrance. Which prepared us for lots more stairs after entering the cave.
He found a cave and actually got his younger nephew to tie a rope around himself and venture into the hole. He soon needed much more rope. Now there is a steel stairway that descends several hundred feet down. It is an engineering marvel to install the stairs. But it was quite a trip.
There were all kinds of cool cave sites. Like this.
And this.
And this column.
Oh, and this.
And don't forget this.
I kind of wanted to dive down into this pool. But a sign said "No Diving". So I didn't.
Towards the end it felt like something was in the dark corners. All kinds of scary beings could be around the next corner.
So George Marshall made this cave passable back in the '20's. And it had lights and everything. He called it the New Entrance to Mammoth Cave. But they made him prove it to use that name. So he tied a rope around his poor nephew again, and he did come out in the other part of Mammoth Cave, so they got to keep the name. But after the main cave became a National Park, he eventually sold out to be part of the park in 1931. Since it was the Depression, he took the generous offer of $290,000, which would be a zillion dollars today. If you go, take a jacket as it is in the 50's all year round. There is plenty to see and do in Kentucky besides field days. Which are pretty cool anyway.
