I spent two days at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Like Mesa Verda, you mainly see this park through tours. There are a few hikes above ground that you can do on your own, but I didn’t do any of those. Mammoth Cave is the largest known cave in the world. 426 miles of the cave have been mapped, but researchers think that might only be half of the cave. It’s pretty cool to think that this cave, like the Grand Canyon, was forged by a river.

On Friday, I did the Historic Tour and the Domes and Dripstones Tour. As the name suggests, the Historic Tour takes you through the historic section of the cave, the part that was first discovered and has been used for many purposes for a long time. It covers about 2 miles. As opposed to all the other caves I’ve been to, this section of Mammoth Cave is dry. There is no dripping water and there are no stalactites or stalagmites. A lot of this section just looks like a subway tunnel, but as you go a little deeper, you see some rock formations and Mammoth Dome, a massive vertical shaft. There is one part, called Fat Man’s Misery, where you walk through a narrow, winding path that has a low ceiling at times. That was fun to get through.

The Domes and Dripstones Tour starts at a different entrance to the cave and covers about 0.75 miles. As opposed to the historic part of the cave, this part is wetter. You might get “cave kisses”, drops of water falling on you, and there are stalactites and stalagmites. You start out the tour by descending 300 steps. I was amazed by how deep and tall the cave can be in some sections. Both tours go through parts of the cave that have electric lighting, but in both, the guides turned off the lights at one point so we could experience the cave in its natural form. It was pitch black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, even when it was touching my nose. And it was completely quiet, which was both eerie and wonderful. While the lights were off, the guide told us that that’s what the entire cave looks like, so we can say that we’ve seen all 426 miles.

I had booked the Violet City Lantern Tour for Saturday. It’s a 3 mi tour where you use lanterns as illumination and is supposedly the best tour. I was excited for it, but I ended up canceling my reservation. I had a headache all the previous night and had it on and off during the day on Saturday and I was exhausted. I looked at a few videos of the tour of YouTube and decided that it didn’t look exciting enough to make it worth going on given my current condition.

My headache continued through the next night and I had a mild headache all day today while driving to New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. I’ve also had an itchy rash on my neck the past few days, which is weird. I get headaches every once in a while, but I don’t get rashes unless I’ve been petting bunnies or cats, which I haven’t been doing. I took all this to mean that something is off in my body, so I’ve been trying to be nicer to my gut to see what happens. I haven’t been itchy in the last few hours and my headache is almost gone, so it seems to be working. Hopefully I’ll be all good tomorrow morning, but I’m going on a hike with or without a headache.