July 16, 2006: Lexington, Mammoth Cave, & Nashville

Six signs of the South we spotted today:

• Castle Farm, outside Lexington on Versailles Road (pronounced "ver-sails," naturally), whose crazy-rich owner constructed a full-scale castle

• A pair of billboards, one featuring the Ten Commandments and the other reading, “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?”

• Several Cracker Barrel restaurants and stores

• A gas station with three posted prices: one for gas, one for diesel, and one for Marlboro

• Obesity, due at least in part to an excessive fondness for Krispy Kreme doughnuts and fried chicken with more breading than meat (I’m the first to admit that I need to lose 15 pounds - and I'll probably gain a few additional pounds on this trip - but we’re talking about a lot more than a few pounds.)

• Southern hospitality

As an example of the latter, I offer the tale of our first, and one hopes our last, automotive mishap of the trip and the Good Samaritan who came to our aid. The car developed a pronounced shimmy over the weekend, but since no mechanics were available in Lexington on a Sunday, we figured we’d try to make it to Nashville and have the problem seen the following morning. No such luck. With a sudden bang and a ferocious clatter, the tread separated from our right front tire at about 75 miles per hour on I-65, just south of Elizabethtown.

We pulled over to discover that the tire wasn’t flat, just shredded down to the belts. We took the next exit and limped to a truck stop where a mechanic, who normally had nothing to do with cars, agreed to help us out. He removed the ruined tire, cut away the tattered plastic interior of the wheel well, and mounted the spare. We gave the man some money and our hearty thanks and got back on the road.

Despite the delay, we still made it to Mammoth Cave National Park in time for the final “Frozen Niagara” tour of the day. We were assisted by the fact that our route took us south into the part of Kentucky in the Central Time Zone, meaning that we gained an hour as we set our clocks back.

We marveled at the number of low-rent tourist traps at the entrance to the park: Dinosaur World, Haunted Maze, Yogi's Water Slide, Mammoth Cave Wax Museum, Hillbilly Hound Fun Park, Big Mike's Mystery House, and many other roadside attractions, including miniature golf, bumper boats, horseback riding, and dozens of rock and souvenir shops.

After we bought our cave tour tickets, a bus took us to the "new" cave entrance, located in a sinkhole some distance from the "old" entrance. We walked into the chill, damp darkness and clambered 250 feet down a series of staircases. We entered a large chamber called "Grand Central Station" since several passages lead into it.

A guest asked whether earthquakes affected the caves much, and our guide said no. He compared seismic waves to those in water; the action is on the surface, while only a few inches or feet below, the liquid isn't perceptibly disturbed.

Our guide also explained how limestone combines with carbon dioxide to produce carbonic acid, which acts with running water to dissolve the limestone, forming caverns and other underground openings, and with dripping water to create stalactites, stalagmites, and columns, which are gradually built out of calcium carbonate particles. (You may recall some of the fun mnemonic devices used to remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. My favorite: "When the mites go up, the tights come down.")

We continued through a long series of passages until we came to the high point of the tour: Frozen Niagara, a wondrous arrangement of flowstone formations,

and beneath it, the Drapery Room, filled with stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstone.

Many of the rock formations were discolored from years of human intrusion into their ecosystem. At over 360 miles of surveyed routes, Mammoth Cave is by far the largest cave system in the world, so our 90-minute tour covered less than one percent of its total distance.



Just before we crossed into the Volunteer State, we bought gas for the lowest price we’ve found so far: $2.78 a gallon, which is somewhat surprising considering the newest turmoil in the Middle East between Israel and Lebanon.

At about 9 p.m., Debbie’s cousin Trent and his wife Ellie welcomed us to their Nashville neighborhood, a place of broad lawns and gracious homes. Trent is a physician who practices pediatrics and internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, where he also researches and teaches biomedical informatics (a subject Debbie is interested in pursuing). Ellie is a lawyer who administers the Tennessee Space Grant Consortium, an educational grant from NASA, also at Vanderbilt.

Trent's pediatric skills were put to immediate use, as Danny had picked up a tick on his arm at some point during the day. The bug came off painlessly and bloodlessly.

Trent is a fanatical runner and, like Meryl, something of a fitness nut. He is currently planning to participate in Colorado's Pike’s Peak Marathon in August. This is an even more gruelling race than the Jungfrau Marathon in Switzerland, which we attended a few years ago with the family of a Bernese friend and competitor. While the Jungfrau bills itself as the toughest marathon in the world, it ascends just 5,000 feet over 26 miles; the Pike's Peak climbs more than 7,700 feet in half that distance, whereupon runners must descend the same route. The Jungfrau is probably more scenic, though. (Trent is also organizing the Harpeth Hills Flying Monkey Marathon in Percy Warner Park, near their home, in November.)

If it's possible to imagine, Trent and Ellie have also found time to raise two darling daughters, Shayna, age 7,

and Adena, age 4. Both girls were already asleep, so we would meet them in the morning.

Today marked the 25th day of our journey, the halfway point in this seven-week trip. It has flown by!