Mammoth Cave, KY

[Again, no pictures. Caves are not conducive to flash photography.]

After Michigan we drove down to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The cave system is immense. Over 350 miles of passageways are surveyed, and they still haven't charted everything. I'd call it the Grand Canyon of the cave world. All of those passageways are crammed into a roughly 15 square mile area. Unlike Howe Caverns, the caves are bone dry for the most part---this is thanks to a hard capstone over the caves that is impermeable to rain water.

Saturday June 30, 2001

On Monday we booked it down to Mammoth Cave, KY. Our tent disintegrated when we put it up, so we went and bought a new one for about $100. Late dinner. [Art foolishly said it was okay to leave our sleeping bags out while we ran to Walmart for the tent. And of course, it rained while we were away.]

Tuesday we took 2 tours into Mammoth Cave; both were fantastic. Katy and I enjoyed [them] immensely.

St. Louis, MO

Saturday June 30, 2001 (cont'd) Wednesday we drove to St. Louis, MO to stay with Katy's Aunt Carole and Uncle Greg. That night we went to a St. Louis Cardinals [baseball] game. We had the best seats in the house; we could rest our feet on the backstop! It was pretty amazing, being that close to big names like Mark Maguire. Thursday Katy and I went up to the Arch of St. Louis. I had no idea it was so big, or that you could travel up into it. We watched two films and visited the museum under the arch; the first was a documentary on the building of the 630 foot arch. The second was about the westward expansion of the United States.

(Uncle Greg and Aunt Carole)	(Downtown St. Louis)
(I think the Arch is taller by a couple of inches . . .)

Mississippi River

This was the first time I saw the Mississippi River. Before I saw it I had notions of jumping in when I finally found it and swimming around. Funny enough, I didn't feel like doing that once I came face to face with it. The pictures below aren't very good. In fact, they are some of the worst ones in this album. Yet, I'm not making a tourbook, so I felt it was important to show the everyday working face of St. Louis as well as the prettied up center of town. Plus, it was the first time I saw the river.

Hays, Kansas

Sunday July 1, 2001

Full day of driving. Kansas is much hillier than I'd expected. [Which is not to necessarily say that it has all that many hills . . .]