Instead of driving several hours north to celebrate my birthday, this year we drove south. Kentucky is the land of bourbon, the fastest two minutes in sports, and the world’s largest hole in the ground – Mammoth Cave.
Mammoth Cave has over 400 miles of underground tunnels. That’s a lot of dark places for people to get lost, so the only way to tour the cave is while guided by a ranger of the National Park Service. The NPS offers a number of tours, from easy hikes to hard-core spelunking. And it turns out, they book up several weeks in advance during the summer months. We weren’t able to book a couple of the ones we wanted to take, but we did snag some spots on the Historic Tour which enters the cave at the historic entrance.
Tripods and flash photography are not allowed on the Historic Tour, so I had to shoot at a really high ISO and a really long shutter speed to get any acceptable images. Those are not exactly the camera settings I prefer to use, but I made do.
In the afternoon, we rode a shuttle bus to a different part of the park for the Domes and Dripstones Tour.
This tour ends in what’s called Frozen Niagara. It’s the most photographed section of the cave and it was easy to see why – it was an awesome mix of creepy and spectacular.
tresamusantephoto.com 