A Spelunking We Will Go

After leaving the humble confines of America's advertisement against celibacy, Shaker Village, we went to another place in Kentucky, the town of Cave City, near the gates of one of our premiere natural attraction, Mammoth Caves National Park.   

The death of the American middle class vacation, which I will more fully discuss in another post, has hit Cave City pretty hard.  Surrounded by motels that were nowhere near capacity, and attractions (tourist traps, if you will), that lay sick, dying or dead, there was a great sadness surrounding this once thriving vacation spot.  One of the spots near our motel was Funtown Mountain.  We couldn't find it right away in our google searches of area attractions, because it is listed as Guntown Mountain, which went under some time ago.  Somebody bought it out recently, and it had it's grand reopening the day before we arrived.  All they did was take the old sign, and slap an F over the G.

Most of the attractions at Funtown were closed (they failed to pass inspection), but the Haunted Hotel was open.  We did not go in, but can you see the huge line waiting to get inside?

Benjamin used all his might and by about the tenth try, he rang the bell.  I did it on the second try.  Man, did all those years of weight lifting and strength training pay off!  Then I remembered I must have been thinking of somebody else.

The mini-golf was do it yourself, as apparently they did not have the staff to assist.  I guess we could have done it all day if we wanted to.  It was a nine hole indoor, glow in the dark course.  None of our pictures of it turned out, so we can't amaze you with it's dazzling array of cheesy obstacles.

We made it to the one great, mammoth  attraction in the area, Mammoth Caves National Park.  What is one of it's primary attractions for this Southern family?  55 degrees in those caves, y'all!  If they had condos down there, I might make it our summer home.

One of our few pictures to turn out while we were down there.  It is of the Kentucky Monument, made by an earlier generation of tourists.  Notice also the writing on the ceiling (referred to as ghostwriting), done by tourists in the nineteenth century.  There was a lot of trashing of the place done by earlier generations, including a whole lotta drinking.  Just in case you thought our current generation was the worst, and prior generations were saints.  All you have to do is consider slavery, Jim Crow, child labor, suppression and subjugation of women, a level of alcohol and drug abuse that would make this generation look like pikers, and on and on, and you'll stop your Mayberry fits of nostalgia.

Next stop - Nashville!

Yeehah!