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Central Kentucky

Into the cave we go. Wooo Hooo! As you can see, the entrance isn't natural, it's manmade. Blasted through solid rock in 1931 by some guy named Carmichael, it descends 200 feet into a large, open passage called Cleveland Avenue.

It's kinda dark in here. In low-light mode, my camera takes blurry shots because I don't have a tripod. I'll have to experiment with things, I'll take some flash as well as non-flash shots. That's the problem with caves. There really isn't enough light to take a picture without a flash, however, if you use a flash you lose your field of depth and the foreground is pretty washed out. They can put a man on the moon, but they can't.... oh, whatever... let's move on.

Upon entry I'm treated to a wall decorated with gypsum flowers.

Until we hit the Snowball Dining Room, we'll be walking through the passageway called Cleaveland Avenue. There's plenty of headroom in the cave.

Here's two pictures of the same scene, one without a flash, and one with a flash. Personally, I prefer the non-flash photo, it's more true to the color I see with my own eyes. The flash shot adds purple and red hues that don't look anything like the real-deal.

The cave is starting to really heighten and widen at this point of the tour. It's hard to believe, all this open space was once filled in with limestone and shale. Millions of years ago, rain water, turned acidic by the soil it passed through on the way down, crept into the cracked rock face. Over time, the acidic water slowly washed away the limestone and shale, and over the millennium, produced empty spaces such as the one I'm walking through now.

It's hard to believe, this space was once filled with water. Where did the water go? Well, the water table has since dropped with the slow descent of the Green River due to the erosion of its own river bed. This geology tells us that the caves closer to the surface are the oldest. As the water table drops, the subterranean soon follows. So, any cave found above the water table will eventually drain, just as this one had, many eons ago.