Saturday dawned ... and we just yawned and finally woke up at 7 AM. We were supposed to book our cave tours which started to sell out by 8AM. After a brush and a couple of donuts I accompanied Amey and Poramet to the ticket centre where we gathered some information about the tours and activites at Mammoth caves from the (cute looking) receptionist. As we had thought, most of the tours were sold out (with people booking them as early as 2 weeks before!! ) But we were lucky enought to get tickets to the 2 best and longest tours - Historic tour and Frozen Niagra.
The first tour (Historic) was about an hour later and so the other 4 guys decided to get some chow. I decided otherwise as I had heard there arent any restrooms in the caves. (no risks is the name of the game).
At 9.15 we began our descent into the cave guided by one Forest Ranger .. a tall well built guy having really good way of telling all the stories he had and making them sound interesting (some of which now i think are so foolish). But it was great to listen to them at that time in that atmosphere. We had a group of about 40-50 people in our tour batch. The tour lasted for about 2 hours in which we went approx 280 feet underground in a cool temperature of 54F (~18C). Our guide was a man with tremendous stock of stories and humor and was pretty knowledgable about the geological processes going on around inside the caves. We left the cave at 11.15 with loads of pictures and videos and complete awe of nature and its prowess to create something so beautiful with just water. (and ofcourse awe about the stories)
The next tour was at 3.15 and we decided to use the 4 hour break in between to make some arrangements for our stay for that night. The cottages were all full. We all were all interested in camping and Pooja had also got her tent along. So off we went to search camping places. Unfortunately for us, all the camping grounds inside the national park were booked too. But we found a camping ground about 5 miles away from the park being run by a grandpa n grandma. They also had a small room on the side with a Foose-ball table inside. Had awesome time with it later. That taks completed, off we went to get some food into cave city a small town about 10 miles from the park.
We reached the park at 2.30 and enquired about tours of the national park itself. Thats where we met a guy called Joe... he was very very sweet and knowledgable about tourist parks and scenic beauty around the country and he gave us a huge big list of various places we would like to visit if we into hiking ( i sure am). We had to cut his suggestions short as our tour was on its way. We had another stupendous cave trip with an attractive Forest Ranger named April accompanied by her equally attractive assistant Beatrice. The stalactites and stalagmites in this cave are really breath-taking. The cave being the longest cave in the world, 'looked' the best in the dark. Our guides switched off the lights to leave us in complete pitch black darkness. Boy! We could not even see our own fingers !!! More to come.... tomorrow
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