All posts by paula

80-Cave City, KY

Mammoth Caves – the largest cave system in the world!

We visited Cave City, KY in order to see the Mammoth Cave. We’ve seen several caves/caverns on our travels and definitely wanted to see this one.

It’s the most extensive cave system known to man. That’s saying a LOT. That said, however, it certainly isn’t the most unique or spectacular cave we’ve seen. There are very few formations…VERY few! Most of the cave that we saw on a 2 hour tour was limestone tunnels carved by water, and caverns where huge boulders had fallen from the ceiling to the floor of the cavern caused by the less solid limestone wearing away and causing the more solid sandstone to be unsupported…thus falling in huge chunks.

It was still a very interesting tour! It started with 280 steps down a metal staircase that was only wide enough for 1 person at a time, and several times you had to duck or turn sideways to get past a rock jutting out into the staircase. My mild claustrophobia kicked in a few times, but at least the narrow areas were high and only for a step or two. I concentrated on the people in front of me!

Several of the pictures below are of the natural downward tunnel where they built the staircase.

We walked past lots of rooms and tunnels and finally got to an area that did have some formations. It’s called the Little Niagara because the major formation looks like a rock waterfall! We also saw some cave crickets! We didn’t see any bats although there are some in the cave, just not in the area we toured.

Here are some pictures:

 

79-Smoky Mountains, TN

The Smoky Mountains really do ‘smoke’ – it’s mist rising from the slopes

We took a day trip and drove through the Smoky Mountains while in the area.  I had previously seen the Smoky Mountains when I took my grandson Kyle here a couple years ago on a search for snow.  We saw very little snow as it had been a mild winter and we only saw the eastern side of the range as the road from Cherokee down towards Knoxville was closed due to a landslide.

This time Jeff and I saw the western side of the range and we drove FROM Knoxville up to Cherokee, then along the ridges for a short time and back down the western side on a different road.  It’s very pretty!!  We saw a dam that was built during WWII to power all the factories that were making war material.  It was in an area that was prone to major flooding that just a couple of years before being built had severely damaged several towns downstream.  The dam regulated the water flow through the downstream area as well as providing power.

Here are pictures that we took:

 

 

78-Salem, VA

Dixie Caverns – a great tour of a medium sized cavern in the hills of Virginia

We found this cavern while looking for a campground in the Roanoke, VA area.  We stayed at the campground that is onsite at the caverns and toured the caverns themselves.

The tour was great, and the features of the cavern were great as well!  Here’s my review on Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/biz/dixie-caverns-and-pottery-salem?hrid=_WgYZTbQf1GKjxKWG-ynRA… and here are pictures we took:

77-Gettysburg PA

The Gettysburg battlefield and monuments

We stopped in Gettysburg PA to see the battlefield and monuments to all the men who fought in this Civil War battle.  It’s very well-known so I won’t put in any details about the battle itself.

One thing I did not know was that when the battle ended, both armies continued on their campaigns and left the dead and wounded where they lay!  There were over 7,000 men from both sides that died at Gettysburg and they lay all around the town and fields outside of town for days…weeks…months…while the few hundred people who lived there, mostly old men, women and children since all the young men were gone to the war, struggled to care for the wounded and bury the overwhelming number of dead soldiers.  During the months after the battle, and continuing long after the war was over, relatives of those who died flocked to Gettysburg to try and find their relatives.  The townspeople had to deal with the aftermath of this battle for a LONG TIME!

Here are pictures that we took during the auto-tour of the area…it was too large and spread out to do it any other way! :

76-Western PA

Flight 93 Memorial – the fourth hijacked plane on Sept 11, 2001

While in western PA we visited the Flight 93 Memorial.  It’s not finished yet, the visitors center and much of the information that will be available is not yet there.

But, they have a small area near the parking lot with some plaques showing information about the flight and passengers/crew members.  From that area there is a walkway in black concrete with a short wall on one side that leads to the memorial wall.

The walkway takes you past the area where the plane actually crashed.  It took out part of a hemlock forest and is now a grassy meadow.  Once they recovered as much debris as they could, and as many bodies as they could, they covered in the crash area (which was a big hole in the ground) to make the meadow.

The memorial wall contains 40 marble panels standing upright and connected to each other.  Each one contains the name of a passenger or crew member who was on the flight.  There are 40 in total.

This is a memorial to what I consider to be very heroic people.  They could have huddled in the back of the plane and done nothing – but instead they forced their way to the cockpit and made the hijackers go down early, instead of taking the plane to the intended target; later determined to be the capital building where both the House and the Senate were in session that morning.

Here are pictures we took while there:

 

 

76-Western PA

Falling Water – one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces

While in western Pennsylvania, we toured the Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built home called Falling Water.  It is unique in that it was built OVER a cascading stream and it incorporated large natural boulders into the house.

The land was already owned by the Kaufmann family from nearby Pittsburgh.  They had been using it for several years as a vacation spot and knew of the area where the stream cascaded over rocks.  They usually camped and stayed very near that spot.

They commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a more permanent and elegant vacation home.  Wright walked the area with the Kaufmann’s and envisioned a home that would incorporate a lot of natural materials from the area as well as provide lots of views of the stream and forest.

The Kaufmann’s expected to spend $20-30K on this vacation home, a large sum of money in 1935.  When they saw Wright’s design and plans, they knew this home would be very special.  When Wright said it would cost more they said ok.  It ended up costing over $150K!

The home consisted of a main house with 3 levels plus a staircase down from the primary level right to the stream at the top of the cascades along with a guest house.  It also included servants quarters for 4 servants and a carport that would hold 9 cars.  A caretaker and a gardener lived nearby fulltime.

Wright not only designed the house, he designed and built most of the furniture.

As you look at the photos below, each one has a description