Mammoth Cave visit

Recently I had the great opportunity to catch up with grad school friends AND family by making a visit to central Kentucky. My grad school friends and I had decided that we should all get together for a trip sometime during the summer. Mammoth Cave National Park was the decided-upon location. This is the longest cave system in the world. I visited many times as a child, as well as last Thanksgiving, but none of my friends had been before. None of them had even spent much time in Kentucky before. So it was great to share the experience with them.
We all met up at the Louisville airport. It was interesting to see the discrepancy in our travel times. Four people had direct flights, I had to get up at 3am in order to catch my flight out of Des Moines, and Katherine and Linh had to take overnight flights from the west coast. Once we drove to Cave City, the real cultural experience began with a visit to Cracker Barrel for lunch.
We took two great cave tours - the "Star Chamber Tour" through the main section of the cave by lantern light and the "River Styx" tour, which goes through some of the twisty-turny passages and goes down to the lowest level of the cave. Both were very impressive.
We also checked out a more commercial cave in nearby Bowling Green. The "Lost River Cave" takes visitors on a boat tour through a large cave. There was an interesting difference between this tour and the ones given at Mammoth Cave National Park. At Mammoth Cave, they practically beg you not to go on the tour. They list all of the possible health concerns (weak heart, bad knees, etc) and warn patrons that a medical evacuation could take up to two hours. And then it ends up not being bad at all. But at Lost River, there were no warnings whatsoever. But once they had us all loaded in the boat and floating away from the dock, we went under this super low spot where you practically had to put your head between your knees to keep from knocking your head off. Crazy. The visit to Bowling Green also enabled another cultural experience - a visit to Waffle House.
We also had time for a nice hike, even though the trail was wet and had some obstacles. But the best part was just getting caught up and hanging out. We played some old favorite games (mancala) and learned some new ones. Hopefully we'll be able to get together again next year.
After 3 days of fun, my friends left to head back to the airport. And then 10 minutes later my parents arrived at the cabin, quickly followed by my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. And then we spent 2 fun days together as a family. We took a quick cave tour, went horseback riding (Tiffany, Abby and I), and I even got my parents into a canoe! We also made a trip to Bowling Green to see a minor league baseball game. Overall we had a great time, only throwing two temper tantrums at the local fast food outlets (me at McDonald's, dad at Wendy's, I learned from the best). It was a great few days away from my computer and the stress of work, and it's always good to visit with dear friends and family. There are more pictures here.