Friday's Tattler

We had a really successful trip to Mammoth Cave. It's always a bit daunting to coordinate travel and timing three hours away, but it came off smoothly.

The kids were outstanding. Their behavior on the bus was wonderful. Several of the children slept all the way down and all the way back. It's amazing how a moving vehicle can entice sleeping!

We took 34 children and 13 adults with us. The bus was not as crowded as we thought it would be.

We stopped at McDonald's in Morganfield to use the bath rooms and made record time to the cave picnic area where the kids played hide and seek until lunch was ready. We ate a nice lunch of ham and cheese, tuna, egg, peanut butter and honey, and chicken salad for the adults. We had melons, peaches and pickles, and chips.

The cave tour began promptly at 1:00. We walked into the mouth of the cave down many steps. It was beautiful. There is a waterfall there, and the vegetation is magnificent. The entrance was a very cool 54 degrees. We moved past the beautiful plant life into the plant-less dark cave. Lots of the kids were a little surprised by how dark it was. We moved quickly through the deep cave, down, down, down nearly 350 feet. We saw the place where the cave was mined for the war of 1812. We saw the graffiti from the late 19th century and the early 20 century. We moved through some very low and very windy ways, and through some very narrow passages. I think the children were amazed by how complicated the inside of the cave is.

We stopped for a fielding of questions at the bottom of our trip - our lowest point. And then began the 350 feet climb to the top and the opening. It was a good climb up about eight flights of stairs, but the view down was spectacular.

We wended our way toward the opening of the cave and back into the heat and the humidity. There was a cloud of steam and vapors waiting for us to walk through on the long incline back to the ranger station.

We used the rest rooms again and then boarded the bus for a five minute trip to our cookie and soda stop. We stopped and devoured the huge batch of Miss Amy's cookies, and we drank all the soda, and then we headed home. We made record time and arrived back at school at 6:00. All the children were picked up on time, and for this teachers were very grateful.

A good trip. Next week: Garden of the Gods!