Mammoth Cave May 6, 2017

Burgess Falls

Leighton’s Story:
We left home.
Donna’s Story:
After Leighton’s tearful goodbye to Sirius we left Chattanooga. Leighton’s head was pounding and his eyes were teary. I was recovering from nightmare about vacation stalkers.  We were both apprehensive about leaving the home for such a long time. As we headed up 27 Leighton said, “I would not have made a good pioneer. It is to hard to leave everything behind”.
After crossing Calfkiller Creek , seeing the orange elephant and having a few laughs, we both realized how fortunate and lucky we are to be healthy and have the ability to take this trip with our favorite person in the world.  We traveled north on  111 until we saw a sign for Burgess Falls State Park.  Since we had not been there before we decided to take a look, especially since all the rain would have the Falling Water River full.  Once there we discovered we couldn’t see all the falls since the steel steps leading to the middle and lower falls were damaged during some flooding, we’ll have to take another trip to see all of it.  What we did see was spectacular as you can glimpse in the photos – the last one is a horned coral fossil.  After about an hour we headed north again towards Mammoth Cave National Park.
We have come so far (4 hours from home) and are staying the night at the Mammoth Cave Hotel. Hopefully we will do better tomorrow.
Today was wonderful.  I hiked 5 miles (L says he did 6), climbed 29 floors and descended 31. Burgess was a 2 mile hike with at least 10 waterfalls. The Mammoth Cave tour starts by descending 268 feet into the ground, all steps.  It was mostly a dry cave meaning no water was dripping through due to the sandstone and shale top coat at the surface.  There was an area where the surface was broken from a sink hole and water seeps through creating the formations shown below.  Mammoth Cave is the largest known cave in the world with over 400 miles of charted tunnels.
We dined at the park restaurant. The only disappointments were they will not allow you to change your order from what is listed on the menu and no cave bathrooms in the parts we were in (other parts do have restrooms). Shocking isn’t it.
Mammoth Cave