Date: May 9, 2004

It was the Memorial Day weekend when I was living and working in Indiana. I finished my first Indy 500 half-marathon, also my first half-marathon, then my husband and I started our planned tour of south Indiana and Kentucky area.

We planned only one day for the park. We joined in a tour at the visitor center in the morning, and I remembered that was the only way to enter. We were amazed at what we saw in there, and its history of being explored and surveyed. I remembered that not all the cave system was owned by the national park system, so still portion of it was in private hands.

At that time, we only have the point&shoot camera, and were very green in techniques of shooting in week lighting. Thus, most photos of the cave as you can imagine were blurry and not worth sharing.

Since then, we have visited many caves, including Luray Cave (Virginia), Crystal Cave (Bermuda), Ruby Falls (Tennessee), Antelope Cave (Arizona), and most recently Carlsbad Caverns (New Mexico). Looking back, Mammoth Cave is not the most visually appealing. I think most of the caves or cave systems are still run by private. Those caves usually have better infrastructure, including pathway and lighting system, to attract more visitors. Mammoth cave doesn’t stand out at all from that perspective, probably mainly due to its size and scale, and its geological structure. However, we shouldn't feel too bad about it because less human intrusion and pollution typically brings less damage to the fragile underground ecosystem of the Mammoth Cave.