Adventure! Day 6 - Mammoth Caves
I had to check the calendar to determine the day - it’s Saturday. Tara is playing Radioactive on the guitar. Almost everyone else is carving wood. Ollivander is in a hammock and so am I. (Different hammocks.) Everyone slept pretty well last night. I’ve paused this blogging multiple times to have a convo about communication styles, which was maybe educational but is mostly annoying. At least for some people. I am some people.
We did our cave tour. It was a lot of steps. A bit like Cloudland Canyon, except that in Cloudland Canyon no one told us we were going to die, and in the domes and dripstones tour we were told the multiple ways we would die and the multiple hours it would take to get us evacuated out of the cave if we had an issue - and then in the end, it was pretty pedestrian. I did not do the extra 96 steps (no regrets). The temperature was wonderfully cool and many of our group did not need long sleeves. I was happy for my boots. Tara was happy for her sneakers.
After the hike, we stumbled across coffee and it was just the right thing. Sadly, the ice cream looked dodgy so we didn’t get ice cream.
Damien and Eli got more wood and Damien made lunch over the fire pit. It was delicious. Dinner will be grilled chicken, I think.
Liam is getting ready to go on the River Styx tour on his own. He gave up his ticket to the domes and dripstones tour so that Éowyn could go since he already had a second tour booked. We booked him a second tour because he’s a geology major and we thought he would enjoy the longer tour that had some crawling and other features I knew most of us wouldn’t love. We’ve got the rest of the day to relax and enjoy the cooler temperatures and the light filtering through the trees.
Big plans for tonight: campfire songs.
While we ate burgers with cheese for lunch, we planned our campfire songs. Below is the list of the songs we sang this evening. We almost sang every song we planned to sing:
Roll the Old Chariot
Wild Mountain Thyme
Go the Distance
Rocky Mountain Ghost
Cherry Wine
Like Real People Do
Take me to Church
Paradise
Angel from Montgomery
January Wedding
Leave her Johnny
Will the Circle Be Unbroken
Sons and Daughters
Electric Love
Radioactive
Every Rose has its Thorn
Long Time Traveler
Parting Glass
I See Fire
Soldier, Poet, King
Galway Girl
Everywhere, Everything
Liam was not super impressed by his tour and I wish he had gone on our tour so that he could tell us if ours was better than his or if his was way better than ours. Perspective is a funny thing. It’s a little bit embarrassing to admit, but the Florida Museum of Natural History did a pretty darn good job of their cave section; as I was walking through the natural mammoth cave (well mostly natural I mean, I guess it was at least made in part by some dude who blasted a bunch of holes in the rock), I basically just felt like I was in the museum.
So if Liam was not impressed by his tour, I can understand it, as his life experiences have been essentially cave-level or better. Hopefully, we will encounter some wonders on our trip that will be awe-inspiring for him. I’m hoping as we head west the topography and changes in the rock will impress him - or at least he might experience the newness and that will be fun for him.
While Liam was on his three-hour tour (which obviously reminds me of Gilligan’s Island and the theme song has been in my head most of today), Tara, Eli, Éowyn, and Tanner all went on their own three-hour tour. It was accidental. Basically, I think they went on every path that was marked for this mammoth national park, plus some that were unmarked. They saw the Green River. I am pretty sure they climbed Airdrie Hill. And tonight when we sang Paradise, it felt like the most incredible experience to be in the place we were singing about and having seen the Green River from a song that we’ve treasured for over a decade. Gotta love John Prine. And Paul Millington.
For our friends at home that felt sad for the lack of ice cream in our lives, rest assured we have consumed non-dodgy ice cream today. This is thanks to Tara, who contacted the local farm that the camp store contracts with to get their ice cream. She was able to determine what ingredients were in the ice cream and we were able to eat the vanilla. Whew!
I know being a Karen is a whole thing, but if you have to travel, it’s best to travel with a Karen of this variety (they come in many varieties: there are people named Karen who are wonderful and kind, people who are hateful and want the manager because they are spoiled, there are the racist Karens - ugh - and then there are the Tara Karens…). When a visit to the camp store front desk lady didn’t turn anything up, Tara insisted she search the internet (“you do have signal here don’t you?”), then when the internet didn’t supply the ingredients, Tara (aka good Karen) encouraged the front desk lady to use the landline in the back office to call the local dairy about the “homemade” ice cream and accompanied her while the call was made. This was all recounted to me secondhand. Had I been there I would have been mortified. Ollivander was so impressed!
I don’t know what happened, but Damien has cooked every meal since he has joined us. Well, every meal that a restaurant didn’t provide. And they’ve all been five stars.
Stella packed one of our garden lights. It’s a rainbow light and it’s beautiful at home but it’s equally beautiful here propped on top of the 2 1/2 gallon jug of water where it is dispersing ambient rainbow light for the children playing their D&D campaign.
We are keeping the same sleeping arrangements tonight, as it seems like it worked pretty well for everybody last night. Kids did complain about some very loudly snoring Boy Scout leaders…well, I assume it’s the leaders and not the 12-year-old boys.
I’m halfway hopeful we’ll get up super early to break camp and head out and halfway hopeful that we will all sleep in till at least 8 o’clock and be able to hit the campsite’s Starbucks on our way out (weirdest campsite ever that has Starbucks cappuccino but a coin-operated shower. I guess that’s Kentucky for you). We’ve got to fuel up again, and tomorrow’s drive is probably gonna be about 10 hours. We need to buy groceries halfway through our drive; after that, we won’t really have access to a grocery store. We are headed into a rural part of Arkansas. Fun fact: Arkansas simply means ‘not Kansas’. Don’t believe me? That’s OK.
Well, we’ve seen the Griffin cousins… We are now on to see the Ohnemus family - part one. We will be meeting up with part two in California, God willing and the creek don’t rise (Capital C on that creek). Book by Beth, Illustrations by Tara.
