Underground Ice Skates

Journey to the center of the earth premiered in 1960. We joined the cast today when we took a 4.5 hour tour into Mammoth Cave. It was the nicest, least humid day of the summer, so what did we do but go below ground. Our tour guide looked like a black Sgt. Carter from Gomer Pyle. He was all spit and polish. He was also the best part of the tour. I'm sure all of his lines have been used before, but the delivery is what made him so funny. Sounding like a southern preacher, he would draw out his words, and make you wait for the punch line to his jokes. The cave is not really that spectacular, just big. 372 total miles of cave, the largest system in the world. We walked 4.5 miles of it, up and down over a path constructed by workers in the 1930's. Unfortunately for us, our choice of footwear was limited. Flip flops or bike shoes. We chose the bike shoes. Walking on metal soles on steep rock and mud made the tour a little more exciting for us. The cave has 5 levels, we only made it to level 3. Level 5 is a river. Most likely the river Styx, the border between Hades and the promised land. That's a Greek belief, and the reason the ancient Greeks were buried with a coin on their forehead. They had to pay the boatman for a ride across. The last half hour of the tour was the best, with stalactites and stalagmites galore. Also columns. Not pillars, those are what New Yorkers sleep on. We learned all about the cave, and how the men were paid a dollar a day for their labor. Hence the phrase, another day, another dollar.

The route from here on out is convoluted. Kentucky has one of the most complicated road systems I've ever seen. All the hollers and hills cause the roads to meander everywhere. We can't ride on the parkways, which more or less go direct, so we ride about 30 miles to go 20 miles east. We figure 2 more weeks on the road and we're done. Tomorrow we plan to ride about 70 miles, but as of yet we haven't figured out a good place to stay. It may come down to looking for a house with a light on and no dog. We'll just go knock on the door and ask ourselves in.