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Mammoth Cave National Park
  • Amy and Pat Taylor

Mammoth Cave National Park

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  • Trip start
    June 21, 2024
    Amy and Pat TaylorMammoth Cave National ParkTraveler

    Birdie's First Flight

    June 21, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 90 °F

    First Flight

    Our footprints (our posts) are mostly for us. Documenting for ourselves where we have gone and what we have done. The sweet moments. The fabulous views. The times we wandered together.

    We are happy to share with anyone who is interested, but when the rocking chair replaces the hiking boots, My Lovely will be flipping through these pages.

    Amy is a scrapbooker - or was. Now technology has made everything digital. And our new toy, the drone, is, we hope, going to capture a different perspective.

    So this footprint is about "Birdie's" (the drone) maiden flight. A simple thing,
    us leaving the house. My Lovely piloted the drone to capture us leaving. (Well, I tried...lol...I got a photo...I'll do better next time...learning curve.)

    The interesting thing (to me) is that the drone has the technology available that we could have simply put it out there and told it to follow us from any angle. But we are old, and technology deficient. It was easier, for now, just to fly it. And that is what she did.

    I have to give credit to our friend John Chosay. He brought his drone to our fish fry. He took a group photo with his drone. And then he compared it to a selfie stick. He said that you could put the camera anywhere and get the shot you want.

    SOLD!!!

    We have a new horizon. Let's watch as My Lovely learns how to catch new perspectives. Watch as she (and I, she hopes) learns to fly this thing.

    We hope everyone enjoys this. We will.

    Edit from Amy....this was supposed to be an "us" toy! Pat has to fly, too!!    Read more

  • Amy and Pat TaylorMammoth Cave National ParkTraveler

    New Money or Something Worth A Lot More

    June 21, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 90 °F

    New Money or something worth a lot more.

    We had a man give us some money today.

    That is not really accurate, but it is what he said as he was doing it.

    The man was visiting a neighbor in the campground and struck up a friendly conversation. And while talking to us, he noticed and commented on the cross necklace I was wearing (a gift from my brother John and sister-in-law Stephanie, on the day of my baptism). And then he said he wanted to give us some money. He reached in his pocket and gave us each a penny. A penny that had been stamped to punch out a cross from the center. Then he reached in his pocket again and retrieved the "drop". The cross that had been punched out.

    No, he didn't really give us money. He shared peace with us.

    I thought it was pretty neat.

    My Lovely liked them too. But she really liked what he said as he was leaving. He told us 'young people' to have fun.

    We are going to have fun. And we will be as young as we can be.

    Peace    Read more

  • Amy and Pat TaylorMammoth Cave National ParkTraveler
    1

    Ranger Alex The Story Teller

    June 21, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 88 °F

    Ranger Alex, The Story Teller

    Our first tour of Mammoth Cave was the Star Chamber Tour. An evening tour without lighting, save the lanterns that a dozen or so of us carried.

    It was just enough light to see where you are going, but not enough to 'see' the cave.

    The photos that My Lovely took will illustrate this. The most you see is the lanterns themselves. Although, I think we have a rather nifty selfie - by the glow of the lantern.

    The tour was more of a story telling tour than a sight seeing tour. And Ranger Alex did a good job.

    He told that us Mammoth Cave (singular - it is all 1 cave - 426 miles long) is the longest cave in the world. And that the cave was privately owned and changed hands many times until 1941 when it became a National Park. But he did not tell us the facts, he told stories and the facts revealed themselves in the stories.

    The cave used to be filled with soil full of nitrates. Nitrates are preservatives (such as in pickles and hot dogs) and back in the day, people mined the soil and filtered out the nitrates and sold them - including to Egypt for mummyfying.

    The Nitrates were used to make gunpowder too.

    And the cave was once bought by a man for its believed medicinal properties. He built cabins of rock inside to house TB patients.

    The tour is called the Star Chamber Tour because Ralph Waldo Emerson once toured the cave and asked to be left in the cave overnight so that he could lie on the cave floor and gaze at the stars on the ceiling.

    The tour was a walk in the dark. Cool air , 54°. We strolled hand-in-hand for about 4 miles and listened to the stories. Then we watched as he gathered all the lanterns and walked away. He left us for a few moments, in the truly pitch black darkness. No light at all. My Lovely was busy trying to see her hand in front of her face while I wisely took the opportunity to steal a kiss.    Read more

  • Amy and Pat TaylorMammoth Cave National ParkTraveler

    Maps and Other Memories

    June 22, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 91 °F

    Maps and other Memories

    Sometimes, we get side tracked, or just lazily behind. I am posting about the Kentucky trip and we still have half a dozen Honduras post waiting (we need to pair photos with the words - and there are a lot of photos).

    As I wrote about in the first footprint of this trip (about the new drone), we do these posts for ourselves to document memories, but we hope that some of those closest to us enjoy what we are doing too. This post is in that same neighborhood.

    Like so many other campers, we have the USA map on our camper showing the states we have visited. Believe it or not, many campers have very distinct rules for these things. Some people put a sticker up even if they just drive through a state. Others say you have to spend a certain amount of time there. Everybody is entitled to their own rule (let freedom rein). Our rule is, we have to spend a night AND we have to do something (a hike, a tour, a bike ride, something) in order to get a state sticker.

    So we get behind sometimes and we didn't do Indiana after visiting Zach and Marina. So today, both Kentucky and Indiana go up.

    The other thing we do is collect stickers from where we go and what we do.

    When we first got married, we did post cards and I wrote a note in a journal of sorts. But we didn't really get to enjoy it. But with the stickers, we get to enjoy what we are doing.

    Amy bought some 'Peel & Stick' wallpaper of a fun variety. It reminds me of the song 'Over the hills and through the woods, to grandma's house we go'. My Lovely covered the front of the camper fridge with the wallpaper. And we put the stickers that we collect on the wallpaper on the fridge. So when we do things like hike in Mammoth Cave, we get a state sticker for Kentucky outside, and the fridge gets a sticker for Mammoth Cave.

    When the fridge is covered, My Lovely will peel the wallpaper and cut it up into squares. She'll make a scrapbook out of it. And then we get to start over.

    It may not seem like fun, but us picking out the right sticker together is a blast. And the placement on the fridge . . . well, that is an event. (Amy edit....ain't we goofy!)

    And two more things. In my previous post I wrote about the penny with the cross punched out. We will find a home for that blessing somewhere in the camper.

    And the last thing: Maddee goes with us everywhere. In our hearts, in our spirit and on our walls.

    Love you and miss you Madgirl.

    Every minute of every day, Baby Girl.    Read more

  • Amy and Pat TaylorMammoth Cave National ParkTraveler

    Mammoth Cave - Grand Avenue Tour

    June 22, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 90 °F

    Mammoth Cave Grand Avenue

    Last night, we did the Star Chamber Tour. This morning, it was the Grand Avenue tour.

    The Grand Avenue Tour is the longest walking tour they offer at 4 miles and lots of inclines.

    The NPS advertises 1,600 stair steps. And there are the inclines beyond that. Well, to set the recorde straight, there are 1,600 stair steps (up and down), but that only tells part of the story. The other part is that my Fitbit registered 51 flights of stairs climbed - it counts walking up an incline 10 feet as a flight too.

    It sounds really hard, but it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The rough tour (that we will not be doing) is a hike where you spend a good bit of time crawling through holes - really small holes. Definitely not for us.

    This tour, like last night's tour, was to a large extent about the stories they tell - the history. But there were 2 awesome highlights.

    The first highlight was Boone Avenue. We spent a decent amount time trekking through what one could best describe as 'wide crevices', slot canyons in the cave. It was really neat and definitely better than the Grand rooms of vast space.

    The second highlight is at the end of the tour. And after doing almost all the stairsteps and inclines mentioned in the 2nd paragraph, when they get to this part of the tour they call it OPTIONAL STEPS, because, if you want to, and you are up to it, you can see "Frozen Niagra", if you choose to do an extra 97 steps. Optional because it is a little side trail down a staircase.

    Well, the first thing I have to tell you is that 97 stair steps is 49 steps down. And 48 steps up. Not too bad.

    The second thing I have to tell you is that it is spectacular. That 1 stairwell was 5 times better than the rest of the day combined - and it was a good day.

    The light is low, and with nature, pictures never do justice, but Frozen Niagra (which is neither Frozen nor a waterfall) is fabulous.    Read more

  • Amy and Pat TaylorMammoth Cave National ParkTraveler

    Still loving our Velotrics!

    June 23, 2024 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 86 °F

    We had an hour and a half of rain this morning. So Pat and I enjoyed our coffee and studied Exodus together.

    We are working our way thru the Bible chronologically using Bible Recap and Bible Project (which are white board drawings that make great introductions for each book).

    After the rain passed, we headed out on our Ebikes. There is a lovely gravel hiking and biking path that goes all the way to the visitor center/cave entrance 10 miles away. Almost the entire path is in the forest, so it was very pleasant. Not too hot! As we were getting on the path, 4 road cyclists (what I call REAL cyclists) passed in front of us. They complemented us for wearing helmets and said all other bikers they had passed had none. We found that to be true, too. No way I would ride these trails without helmets! It was a lovely day, and we did 20.4 miles.

    And, there was even an ice cream sandwich involved!    Read more

    Trip end
    June 24, 2024
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