Mammoth National Park, KY - 4/1- 4/5/2017

A funny name for a cemetery, don’t you think?	We made it! Our obligatory national park sign family photo. Note: Mammoth Cave consists of 405 miles worth of tunnels and shafts, crammed in to seven square miles.	Stephen Bishop’s grave. Stephen Bishop was a slave who served as both tour guide and explorer in the 1840s and 50s. Self-educated and witty, Bishop was a favorite guide among the well-to-do visitors he shepherded through the tunnels and shafts by candlelight. He loved exploring the cave, which called “grand, gloomy, and peculiar.” He was the first person to cross the Bottomless Pit portion of the cave.	Our shuttle between the Visitor Center and the various cave entrances.
We drove another hour north to check out Abe’s birthplace at Sinking Spring Farm.	Born in 1777, Mr. James Robinson was the oldest guy in the cemetery.	The “New” Entrance was blasted into existence in 1921. Today it’s the beginning of the two-hour Domes and Dripstones Tour.	Official bouncer of Mammoth Cave National Park (a.k.a. Cave Tarantula, according to Maureen)
Domes & Dripstones Tour	Domes & Dripstones Tour	Domes & Dripstones Tour	Domes & Dripstones Tour
Domes & Dripstones Tour	Domes & Dripstones Tour	Crystal Lake on the Domes & Dripstones Tour	Monument at Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. Fifty-six steps for his fifty-six year.
Maureen & Jared on their way up the steps.	The cabin inside the monument was thought to be the original one belonging to the Lincolns, but forty years after the dedication by President Taft, it was discovered that the cabin could not have belonged to the Lincolns. Since that time, the cabin is said to be a “symbolic cabin.”	The “symbolic cabin” that Abraham Lincoln never lived in.	Maureen was thrilled to find the cornerstone that Theodore Roosevelt laid on what would have been Lincoln’s 100th birthday.
The sink hole where the Lincolns got their water. Abraham most likely got his first drink of cool, crisp water here.	After a title dispute over their 300 acres at Sinking Spring Farm in 1811, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln moved ten miles north to Knob Creek, which is now referred to as Lincoln’s boyhood home.	The cabin on display at Knob Creek was reconstructed using the logs from the old Gollaher cabin. Austin Gollaher, a boyhood friend of Lincoln’s, pulled him out of the raging creek to safety when they were both very young and didn’t yet know how to swim.	Dixon Cave expelled a constant cold blast. At other times of the year, it “inhales.”
Garlic mustard (and ladybug!)	River Styx Spring	Fire Pink	We started the four-hour/four-mile Grand Avenue Tour at the Carmichael Entrance.
Descending into the depths (Grand Avenue Tour)	Gypsum formation called The Last Rose of Summer (Note: Gypsum only forms in dry caves!)	Old school graffiti on the Grand Avenue Tour	Grand Avenue Tour
Cave cricket on the Grand Avenue Tour