Critters above the cave

After caving, we took one hike on the other side of the ground. Here's a nice sun-loving lizard who was very patient with Joe and I as we snapped about 20 pics. Joe took this one.

Great Onyx...Or

just Great Marketing?
There is no onyx in any of the caves. But there is an abundance of beautiful gypsum formations. These look like flowers or sea creatures, depending on your imagination.

Misnomer aside, Mom and I liked the Great Onyx Cave the best... the tour was only 30 people as opposed to 100, and the stalactites and stalagmites were still very much intact... something quite rare for a cave that has been open to the public since the early 1800s. Cave salamanders were a nice touch:
I spotted this little guy on the wall when everyone else just walked on past :-) Because I have a radar for cute life forms. I'm seriously thinking I missed my calling as a national parks ranger.

Mammoth Cave

So we didn't speelunk

But we had a good time shuffling our way through two tours of Mammoth Cave and one of the Great Onyx cave, north of Bowling Green, Ky. All my cave pics are blurry. But it kind of gives them that disoriented feeling that is true to the caving experience.

These two photos are Mammoth Cave, which we toured on Saturday. Kentucky has karst topography ... underground rivers, sinkholes and caverns galore. Mammoth cave encompasses 367 miles of known cave. Our first tour was lit, but we carried coleman lanterns on the other tours. (I used a flash on the picture below)