a Fair and a Cave

Luke liked the free-est things at the Fair. We bought snow cones, tickets to ride rides, showed him the exciting flashing lights of the Ferris Wheel - but let's face it - it was hot and over stimulating and he hated it all. Isn't it funny how sometimes as parents we try to force our kids to have fun? We gave up and were leaving the Fair - all 3 of us very sticky, hot and ornry - when suddenly we found all the things Lukey really wanted. We didn't need to spend money on a fancy Fair. Turns out he likes the simplicity of the Farm Life. (All you Memphians - there is a FREE petting zoo and little farm display that you can go to WITHOUT paying the Fair admission.)




duck waterslide




it's a kangaroo!!



MAMMOTH CAVE

Sunday night we drove to a hotel in Bowling Green, KY and the next morning took a tour through the famous Mammoth Cave. (Well, part of it - it's Mammoth you know - longest cave in the world - over 370 miles)
Joey here: We did the New Entrance tour because it was one of the shortest (for Luke's sake), and most highly recommended tours. The New Entrance has a very interesting history frought with adventure and riches. A man named George Morrison was a mine surveyor local to Mammoth Cave back in the early 1920's. He realized that while most landowners in the area were breaking their backs farming for a pittance, the real money was being made by the owners of Mammoth Cave by charging tour fees. Morrison ingratiated himself with the tour guides and eventually talked one of them into giving him a key to the cave. He explored the cave by night and soon realized that much of the cave's passages wandered outside of the cave owner's land. According to Kentucky law, and pretty much everywhere for that matter, if you own land you own everything underneath it as well. Morrison bought up some cheap land near the cave and started using dynamite to blast in sink holes on the surface (sink holes are funnel shaped basins where water flows into the ground). After some trial and error, a blast revealed a man sized opening into an apparently bottomless pit. After two weeks of using ropes and nephews to descend downward they reached a horizontal corridor where they found initials carved into rocks. Morrison had found the "New Entrance." Since his entrance was a couple miles closer to the main road he was able to divert a lot of the tourist traffic to his entrance and he did indeed become very wealthy.

New Entrance Tour




Frozen Niagra


Historic Entrance




Katie here: So, I think that story about that Morrison guy is funny. It reminds me of something my brother Jake would do. He even set up road blocks and had people dress like police directing traffic to HIS entrance. "Oh, are you looking for Mammoth cave? The old entrance caved in and the new entrance is this way" People were a little disappointed when they didn't see some of the historic cave landmarks they had read about but when Morrison found the Frozen Niagara portion of his cave, it made up for it. And it definitely became a famous part of the cave. (another tip for Memphians - this cave is awesome. It's about a 4 hour drive but worth it. If you have toddlers I would suggest doing 2 of the 30 minutes tours or you could do this tour which was 2 hours but it was a little rough for wild, wanna-run-around kids.)