Our First Anniversary

One year ago yesterday Patrick and I finally tied the knot! Ten years in the making and here we are...married and happy as can be! We have loved every minute of our married life. Everyone told us that the first year would be the hardest. If that's true then the rest of our lives are going to be a breeze! Sure, we've had our share of difficulties but we always worked through it together. We celebrated our first anniversary by going to Mammoth Cave National Park. It's somewhere we've both wanted to go and it's not too far away (perfect for a newlywed pocket-book).

Heading off to Cave City

The Native Americans were the first humans to enter the cave. Can you imagine heading into this with only a flaming stick?

I've always heard of Fat Man's Misery...

It wasn't so bad

Slaves took people on tours through the caves. To make some money they would let people sign their names on the cave walls for 10 cents. People would hold candles up to the ceiling and use the smoke from it to write their names. Notice how neat their hand writing is? Mammoth Cave was a week's ride away from Louisville so people who came had to take a lot of time off. The only people who could afford to take such lengthy vacations were wealthy, white people so they were highly educated and could wright very well.

Gypsum Flowers

Bare Cave: Interesting how this cave got its name. The man who discovered it could not fit with his clothes on, so he went through without them!

The top of the Snowball Room

This is one of the only three underground dinning areas in the world!

Heading through some passageways named after Daniel Boone. They were pretty narrow but you could look up and see about 50 feet above you!

See where the arrow is pointing? Before our nice, smooth pathways were created, tours were given on these ledges! Cliff sides even! BY LANTERN LIGHT! It's a good thing they couldn't see over the edge or they probably wouldn't have any customers. Those dinky, little pegs in the ground had a chain through them and that was the only sort of safety net they had. Miraculously, there is no recording of anyone falling.

This is the exit for a tour called the Wild Cave Tour. I would be up for this cave if I wasn't afraid of getting stuck. Plus you have to go through the Birth Canal and the Cheese Grater so that puts the brakes on for me too. These are the kind of tours you have to pull yourself through because they are too small for to crawl through.

The Frozen Niagara

Look up

We went through some pretty short passageways

But for short people like me, that's not a problem

We topped our great trip off with some year-old cake and Ale-8. It was still delicious! Funny story about the glasses. I bought these for the wedding but we couldn't find them in time. We used some glasses there at the reception and was going to use Ale-8 to toast with but we were in such a hurry I just grabbed the first two glasses I found and poured some water in them. About a week after the wedding was over we found the glasses. After one year, we finally got to toast our Ale-8 in our fancy glasses.

It's been one great year and we're looking forward to many, many  more!

Jess