Anyway, fast-forward to the actual trips I go on (which are very few). We dutifully take our camera and...either forget to take any pictures, or the batteries we've assured ourselves would be alright die right when we need them. So no pictures. It's called Cheap Camera Syndrome. Mammoth Caves, of course, came down with a heavy case of this devastating illness. So all the pictures I'm showing were taken by one of our fellow travelers, whose name is Chad T., just so you know. All, you know, zero of you. I like to give credit where it is due.
Enough babbling. Talking about the trip!
The drive up was surprisingly not bad, considering it was 6.5 hours long and began at 6 am. Stocked up on McDonald's coffee, I was behind the wheel most of the trip up, since Hubs got maybe 3 hours of sleep and was probably hallucinating or at least delirious from exhaustion. The goal was for him to take a nap on the way up, but of course that never happened.
There's something about driving through mountains that not only looks gorgeous but keeps you on your toes. Plus, there were tunnels, which I *love.* On the way, we passed such notable places as an absolutely enormous adult (*ahem*, porn) store with an equally enormous cross erected (*snicker*) over it, the Hillbilly Mug Bog (god knows), Anton's Sugar Shack, and a monster-truck by the name of the Hustlin' Hobo. Good times, good times. We got off-track a couple of times due to a rogue GPS unit, sidetracked by a sudden run for a geocache, and stopped for a few unnecessary (in my opinion) potty breaks, but all things considered we made it to the campsite in good time.
Mammoth Caves is a national park and has a campground attached to it, right near the visitor's center, a small store we had fun looking through, a hotel(!), and various walking trails. The campground itself is in the midst of a beautiful forest-y area. After we set up our tents, we walked around it for a while, looking for dead-wood to fuel our campfire with but mostly just taking in the gorgeous scenery.
There were flocks of wild turkey and deer that came within a few yards of us, almost completely unafraid. They must see thousands of people every year, and since there's no hunting allowed (and undoubtedly some clandestine feeding), they grow up with little fear of humans.
That night we built a fire, cooked our food, and shot the shit. Hubs and I had brought mostly cooked food for the weekend, since it takes forever to make stuff on a campfire, but our friends roasted weenies. I only toasted marshmallows, and boy howdy they were good.
The conversation was...a little adult for my taste. Not that I'm a prude by any means, but eventually it gets boring. It got boring for me. Plus, I'm...not a talker. I have made very few friends in my life as a result of this. It's not just fear, either, although that is a large part. I am simply not the kind of person who enjoys talking about trivial every-day things. In a nutshell, I hate small-talk. So I was at a little bit of a disadvantage with Hubs' friends. They all knew each other for years, had hung out numerous times, and were very comfortable in each others' presence. I felt...left-out. Not in my element. Which, of course, made me clam up more. That set the theme for the entire weekend for me. *sigh*
The other times Hubs and I had gone camping, we'd slept in our sleeping bag on the ground. I didn't mind it since our sleeping bag is thick, but Hubs hated it, so this time we took an air mattress. ...It pretty much blew a big fat one. Didn't inflate enough, and really killed my neck. So that night's sleep was...fitful, to say the least. That probably didn't help my mood any, nor did the fact that there were some annoyingly-loud late-night talkers at the campsite next to ours, and the campsite across the way housed a whole scout troop that woke up at the crack of dawn and started SCREAMING. Well, playing. But 10-year-old boys scream when they play.
We'd purchased tickets for the Grand Avenue cave tour, which lasted 4.5 hours and covered 4 miles of cave, and was supposed to be fairly strenuous with lots of stairs and changes in elevation. Really, the best bang for your buck. Our tour guide was a tall, skinny ranger with ears like a bat, which turned out to be very appropriate since we saw bats!
We were bussed to the cave entrance and given the safety talk (stop walking when you're taking pictures-- wouldn't want you to misstep and fall into one of the 200-ft-drop caverns; it's slick in there so don't fall and sue us, watch your head because caves tend to have rocks in them, etc.). Then we were led inside by our tour guide and a ranger-in-training.
So, the cave.
It was COLD. We'd been warned that it was between 55-60 degrees inside, and since I always get cold, I'd put on a thin long-sleeved shirt, a t-shirt over that, and a hooded sweatshirt over THAT. Waiting for the bus, I'd been sweating and our friend's wife tried to get me to take off the long-sleeved shirt at least, but I was glad I didn't. I was still cold even with it!
The trail was rough, though less rough than I'd feared. Most of the first half of the tour was pretty even, making me wonder if it wasn't a bit of a rip-off, despite the views. It was dim. There was just enough to see where to walk, and to catch the more spectacular formations. We stopped every now and then to hear a story about the history of the cave, the particulars (such as how deep below the Earth's surface we were, and just how they manage to have running toilets down there [they pump the, ahem, mess up in pipes]), and other interesting tidbits.
When I see something like this, I don't want to talk to anyone about it. I want to absorb it, feel it in my soul, listen quietly to what it's telling me. Things like this are almost spiritual for me. So maybe it wasn't the best thing to do with people I don't know very well. Small-talk around a campfire is one thing. Small-talk inside a glorious cave that I want to inwardly reflect on is quite another. I started feeling pretty annoyed and unhappy about halfway through, but luckily then we had a lunch break (there was actually a small cafeteria down there. Seriously.) and I was able to eat some pretzels and calm down a bit.
The trail got harder and harder after that. The trail got slick from the water seeping through the rock, there were quite a few steep hills to climb up, stairs and narrow passages to squeeze around. There were also quite a few low areas that most people have to duck, but being only 4'11", I was not most people. I did feel a little smug about that, I have to say.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. They were beautiful.
After a while, though, I got tired of being cold and trying to be sociable (when being sociable meant "dick jokes"), and I'm afraid I just started walking ahead of my group. I was in a grump most of the rest of the tour. I definitely enjoyed the caves, but I was ready to be out of there.
There were a LOT of people on the tour, including a lady who looked like she had to be at least 75. I have to say, I wasn't sure Grandma could keep up. But Grandma did better than I expected! Someone on our tour managed to get hurt somehow, either slipping and falling on the rock or having some other sort of difficulty, because the ranger-in-training had to stay with them at one of the cave's internal checkpoints and wait for some of the park EMTs to come in with a chair to get them out. For a little bit I feared for Grandma's safety, but she was actually one of the first people out of the cave, looking not in the least winded.
At the end, we emerged, exhausted, cold, and disheveled, into the sunshine. Then I had to try to cheer up again, but I don't think I succeeded too well. When we got back to the campsite I took a nap and a shower, and felt much better.
We had been thinking of going geocaching, but I think all of us were fried from that 4.5 miles hike. So instead, we just sat around the campfire again that night, watching silly Saturday Night Live videos and eating marshmallows. I went to bed early that night.
We'd also been discussing walking on one of the trails the next morning, but I think we were still fried (leftovers?) from the day before. It was the work of an hour or so to pack up our tent, put everything in our car, and eat a quick breakfast before heading out.
The drive home was much nicer. We weren't following our friends in their car anymore, so there were no unscheduled potty breaks or spur-of-the-moment geocaches, which means we made much better time.
We got home around 4 pm on Sunday, and I promptly got my period, which explained my mood of the entire weekend. And we promptly collapsed. After unpacking and all.
It was...an experience. I'm inclined to think it a good one, even if I was a pill for most of it. It's depressing and distressing both to think that I was the one who made it less fun than it could have been, because re-examining everything, when all's said and done, I didn't really have all that great a time.
I enjoyed the caves, but not the dark feelings I had inside them. I liked the people, but not being around them so constantly. I liked the trip, but something about it was flat. That something...was me.
I shouldn't be navel-gazing now. I should be remembering how in awe the caves made me, how wondrous it was to think about the gypsum formations that took millions of years to come together, how amazing the idea of water slowly seeping down to make the walls smooth over countless eras, how mysterious it was to think that though only 300 or so miles of cave have been explored, geologists think there's at least 500 or so more of unexplored.
Instead I'm thinking about my own feelings. What does that say about me?
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