Summer 2017, Day 28: Mammoth Cave NP, Abraham Lincoln Birthplace NHP

This morning we drove north, crossing briefly into and out of Tennessee back into Kentucky:

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Our first stop was Mammoth Cave National Park, the longest in the world.  The cave’s subterranean passages are shown on the map in yellow:

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The visitor center was more crowded than usual with post-eclipse traffic.  After touring the visitor center, we descended into the cave:

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Unlike caves we’ve visited in the past, like Carlsbad Cavern, Mammoth Cave is a dry cave, so there aren’t many Stalactites or other cave features here:

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When the cave was first discovered, it was mined for saltpeter.  Some evidence of the mining remains:

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The kids also handed in the Eclipse Explorer books we picked up at another NPS site last week:

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Our next stop was Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park.  The primary feature of the park is this building, built in 1911, in which the childhood cabin of Abraham Lincoln is housed:

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…Except it’s not really Abraham Lincoln’s house.  This cabin was built from logs that made up a tourist cabin claimed to be made from logs from a cabin found on the site that used to house Lincoln’s cabin.  Recently, tree ring analysis has shown that the logs are from trees younger than Lincoln, and therefore could not have been from his cabin.  Nonetheless, it’s the thought that counts, I suppose:

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The memorial building:

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We continued north to overnight at the Walmart of Shepherdsville, Kentucky.  See the alternating light blue line on the trip map for today’s drive.

Summer 2017, Day 27: The Eclipse of 2017
Summer 2017, Day 29: Kentucky Derby Museum, Taft NHS

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