Across the U.S.: Day 43

by Kathy 1. September 2009 20:28

<< Day 42: New River Gorge, West Virginia | Day 44: Twin Knobs Recreation Area to Rend Lake >>

New River Gorge to Twin Knobs Recreation Area, Kentucky

This morning I spent a couple of hours doing laundry and catching up on my traveling notes, while the children played in the lake and built a sandcastle.

Then we headed to Kentucky.

Our first stop was to be the Carter Caves State Park. Before our journey, Ben had done some research online and had discovered that “Pioneer Week” would be starting at the park today. The website described a variety of activities that we thought would be fun—tomahawk throwing, rifle demonstrations, primitive fire making, musical entertainment, and other historical programs.

Along the way, we could see the smokestacks and pipes from a factory poking out above the trees, with the American flag waving.

Welcome to Kentucky!

(After all this time taking photos on the road, you would think that I would have mastered the zoom feature and shutter speed of my camera—not so! However, at least I caught a portion of the “Welcome” sign, and it was in focus!)

Some nearby storage tanks.

We drove for less than an hour on a very smooth freeway, lined with dense trees and rolling hills, with an occasional deer by the side of the road.

Arriving at Carter Caves State Park:

At the Visitor’s Center, we discovered that the “Pioneer Week” activities were only offered at specific times.

We had missed the morning events. The afternoon activities included a talk on bats and white nose syndrome (which sounded interesting), a canoe trip (which we opted not to experience because we had spent many hours yesterday on a river) and a potato peeling contest (which was limited to persons who were at least 16 years old). We decided to listen to the bat talk, do some hiking, and get tickets for a cave tour.

The bat talk was short but informative. It was given by Marty, who was also our guide on the cave tour. He was raised nearby in Grayson, Kentucky.

We had never heard of the “white nose syndrome.” We were surprised to learn that it has killed an astounding 1.5 million bats in the eastern United States since 2006, when the disease was first identified in New York. One of the symptoms is a white nose, from fungus. No one knows for certain what causes the disease, but some scientists speculate that the bats’ immune system has been affected from years of eating bugs that have been subjected to pesticides.

Bats cluster when they sleep, with as many as 500 bats in a square foot, so the spread of disease is fast. Once the syndrome is introduced into a cave, there is a 95 to 100% mortality rate for the bats. The syndrome has spread south to West Virginia but has not yet entered Kentucky. Kentucky has banned many caving activities to prevent the spread of the disease by people who might crawl through numerous caves and transfer guano or bacteria from one cave to another.

After the lecture, we set out on a half-mile hike to the Natural Bridge. Marty had given us directions to get to a nearby “wild cave”, so Sebastian brought his flashlight.

The path wandered beside a small stream.

The bridge was quite spectacular (although the beauty wasn’t captured in this photo). It was wide and deep, and stretched high above the small stream.

Walking under the bridge was a bit freaky, as we could see a hole that looked as if it had been caused by a huge chunk of the “ceiling” falling. We could see a big mound of earth below, with a small tree.

We continued past the bridge to get to the "wild cave"—which is a cave that hasn’t been cleaned up and isn’t maintained for visitors. We used stepping stones to get across the stream.

The mouth of the wild cave was large, but there were gates across the entrance to keep people out.

On our way back, we passed two local boys who had climbed to a small cave with a makeshift ladder.

We then met Marty for a tour of the “X Cave.” The cave entrance was a short climb up a path. Here are Ben and Sebastian starting out:

Marty was an excellent guide, with a velvety voice that seemed destined for radio. Another family was with us—Judy and Kevin with their three children, from Irvin, Kentucky. The teenager daughter asked me wistfully, “What’s California like?” I immediately recognized the yearning in her voice, and connected with the dreamy look in her eyes—that was me as a child, longing to be “anywhere but here” in Virginia. (The call of California grew too loud for me to ignore when I was in college.)

Marty took us to the locked gate entrance. There used to be a wooden bridge spanning the creek below, leading to the natural cave entrance; however, the bridge had fallen, so a new entrance had been created by carving out what used to be a crawl-space entrance.

Ben locked the gate behind us.

The surrounding rock was Mississippi limestone. The cave formations were formed by water seeping through the limestone, picking up calcite in the rock, and then dripping downward.

We could see the water was dripping from this formation.

Every cubic inch of a formation represents 100 to 200 years of growth. One large formation that we saw is estimated to be 1.2 million years old.

We walked down to the lowest point in the cave, 95 feet, where there was an “X” formed by four intersecting tunnels—hence, the name “X cave.”

Marty spent a few minutes talking about the history of the caves. The Carter Caves have been known by European settlers since the early 1800’s, possibly the 1700’s. Native American artifacts and graves were found in some of the caves (specifically the Saltpeter Cave). The surrounding fields have an abundance of arrowheads; flint found in the limestone was used for arrowheads and traded among the Native Americans.

The Carter Caves were privately owned by the Lewis family in the 1920’s. Another family owned the Cascade Caves. The cave business had been very competitive between the families. Gates to the entrances had been installed in the 1930’s when economic times were tough and competing cave owners would sometimes hire people to vandalize or destroy the formations in other caves. The city of Carter purchased the two cave groups in the 1940’s and donated them to the state of Kentucky for a park that would attract people to the area.

Marty explained that certain portions of the cave were called “dead” because they were dry and therefore did not have any more cave formations growing.

Other “dead” caves in Kentucky have been mined for saltpeter, which is the explosive found in gun powder. The Carter Caves State Park has a cave called “Saltpeter Cave,” where mined saltpeter was used by the Kentucky Rifleman in the War of 1812.

Marty pointed out a “turkey” that was “so afraid of heights that it was petrified.” (Ha, ha!)

Some of the areas were very moist.

This formation looked like a cascade of jellyfish:

Here is a cave “thumb.”

We all fit through the “fat man’s squeeze.”

We stopped by the “pipe organ” that used to be played for visitors in the 1920’s to ‘50’s. The organ “pipes” are hollow and make a distinct tone when struck. However, the practice of playing was halted because pieces of the organ were breaking off.

Here is some “cave coral”:

We exited the cave out of the natural cave mouth, with was the entrance that was used before the bridge collapsed.

The viewpoint was 75 feet above the ground. We all peered over the edge.

Looking down:

The land formations lead geologists to believe that there probably was a waterfall here at one time, flowing out of the cave mouth.

We re-entered the cave through another entrance.

The tunnel had “Headache Rock” hanging down from the ceiling, right next to “Migraine.” Ouch!

There were other critters in the cave with us:

Marty then turned off the artificial lights inside the cave so that we could experience total blackness. (Thankfully, no bugs dropped on our heads.)

After the tour, we continued on to our final destination tonight—Twin Knobs Recreation Area, next to Cave Run Lake in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

This old schoolhouse had been converted into a beautiful home.

There were many small, older homes . . .

. . . and an occasional larger new home.

This colorful, historic mural was painted by a group of Workforce Investment Act (“WIA”) Youth between 2002 and 2006.

WIA programs provide employment and training activities for economically disadvantaged people from ages 14 to 21.

The use of wagon wheels to create fences is not limited to the Southwest.

The closed-in porch of this home was different from the surrounding open porches.

We didn’t need to stop at this store (although the unusual combination of products made us laugh).

This low, long building was used to store tobacco.

I loved the weathered wood of this old building.

Yesterday I had started noticing the colorful painted quilt patterns that were hanging on various buildings in West Virginia. These quilt patterns were also hung on buildings in Kentucky, including this old shed.