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Central Kentucky

In 1981, Mammoth Cave National Park was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. According to their website, "The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to encourage the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.... World Heritage is the designation for places on earth that are of outstanding universal value to humanity and as such, have been inscribed on the World Heritage List to be protected for future generations to appreciate and enjoy. Places as diverse and unique as the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, the Taj Mahal in India, the Grand Canyon in the USA, or the Acropolis in Greece are examples of the 788 natural and cultural places inscribed on the World Heritage List to date."

Oops, I'd better go back to my van. I can't bring in my explosives, guns, knives, and... oh damn! I can't bring in my diaper bag. Geeze, they're trying to wreck all my fun.

Returning from the van after dropping off all my frowned upon goodies, I go inside the Visitor Center and buy my ticket to the Grand Avenue Tour. The tour is one of the more difficult and lengthy ones. It dishes out a 300 foot elevation change, 4 miles of up, down, and all around, 670 stairs, a food court, two bathrooms, and of course, loads of interesting underground natural rock formations. This specific tour can accommodate up to 118 people and is conducted by two tour guides.

A row of tour schedule monitors. Oh good, my tour is on schedule for 10:15am. What's this? What's on the surface? Who cares! Is anyone here to see what's aboveground? Talk about an ignored display. They could insert a few pictures of dinosaurs and nobody would take notice.

Here's the big view of the big cave. Wow! It's quite impressive. This is only a small portion of the cave system, probably representing only about 3% of the total recorded caves. Supposedly, there's almost 350 miles of explored and documented passageways under my feet. It's been theorized that more than 600 miles of cave remain unexplored. It's a matter of diminishing returns, however. The new mileage that gets added comes at a higher and higher price because new discoveries are all found at the cave's outer reaches. And to get to those outlying areas takes a lot of time and effort.