2014-07-13: Day 18 Another Day Off the Bikes

Visited two significant sites today on a day off the bikes. We all visited Mammoth Caves, a series of continuously linked caverns that total 400 miles in length carved out of the limestone hills in central Kentucky. This is more than 200 miles longer than any other known cave in the world. We spent 2 hours in the cave with the best experiences being right at the beginning when we descended 280 feet - literally through a twisted crack in the limestone layers. I am not kidding here. It was a crack in the rocks down down down that corkscrewed its way inside the mountain. That crack was at times no wider than 30 inches. The national park service has build a special set of stairs for this descent. The ranger gave us strong warnings that the passage was very constricted and very steep before we entered. Then he gave us a chance to back out of the tour. No one did. No one freaked out. The descent was amazing. The last part of the tour was the only section of the cave with stalagmites and stalactites. That section was geologically really interesting.

This afternoon the others rested while I went to get the next chapter in the Abe Lincoln story. If you don't care about Abraham Lincoln you can stop reading now.

Yesterday I introduced you to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks married in 1806. After that union, they moved to Elizabethtown where Sarah, Abe's sister, was born in 1807. The following year late in 1808, they purchased a 300 acre property for $200 called the Sinking Springs property just outside the present day city of Hodgenville, KY. That property was known for a spring that flows out of a limestone cave and drops into a secondary cave on the property. In a cabin on the hill just above the spring, Abraham Lincoln was born in February 1809. The cabin on the hill is entombed in a memorial building and has had some controversy (pictured). From the late 1800(s) until around 1910 this cabin was toured by a private owner in the US and Europe as the actual cabin where Abraham was born. He made a huge amount of money. The US government built and dedicated the memorial building on the hill above the spring in 1911. The cabin has been housed there ever since. However, carbon dating in the 1970(s) has shown that this cabin while an authentic Kentucky cabin actually dates to about 1850. So now the National Park Service will tell you that this cabin "represents" the typical cabins built in the area back during the era that Lincoln was born.