Technology
127: 5 Fascinating Fun Facts about Mammoth Cave National Park
In this episode of the Exploring the National Parks Podcast, hosts Ash and John delve into the intriguing world of Mammoth Cave National Park, sharing five fascinating fun facts about this unique natu...
127: 5 Fascinating Fun Facts about Mammoth Cave National Park
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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on a good trail, you and I might do 15 to 20 miles.
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If we weren't carrying a super heavy backpack
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and things like that, but going through cave passages.
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Totally different.
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Yeah.
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Oh my gosh, that'd be insane.
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This is the Exploring the National Parks Podcast
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with Dirt and My Shoes.
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My name is Ash and I'm a former park ranger
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and the founder of Dirt and My Shoes.
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I think that the parks are best seen from the trail
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and I'm here to make National Park Trip Planning easy.
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And I'm John.
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I carry the kids on the trails, the tail stories,
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and notice all the things that Ash doesn't care about much,
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like trees.
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Join us as we show you around America's spectacular
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National Parks.
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We're sharing our favorite places, fun facts,
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adventures and misadventures.
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And we'll even throw in a little trip planning.
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Let's start exploring.
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Okay.
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Because we travel to the National Parks all the time,
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we have to record these podcast episodes a little bit
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in advance.
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So there's something that's happening right now
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that's really funny, but it will kind of be old news.
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By the time you listen to this.
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Okay.
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But maybe you didn't see this.
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But if you've been on Instagram lately,
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there are posts everywhere and maybe this is just me
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because it's not like I'm going to be a little bit
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as I follow all the National Parks and stuff.
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And so I see a lot of National Parks stuff,
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but there are posts everywhere that are saying
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that all of the animals are leaving Yellowstone.
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It's so wild.
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So it's funny about it.
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It's like I saw one and it was just like a herd of bison,
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just like running.
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And then the captions like all the bison are leaving Yellowstone.
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What do they know that we don't?
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Oh my gosh.
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Anyway, I'm like, I was looking at it and I was like,
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that just looks like a herd of bison.
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Like sometimes they run.
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Even in the park, sometimes they run.
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Weird.
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I know.
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So surprising.
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I know. So anyway, the National Parks Service
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is like coming back and they're like,
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Hey guys, our animals are still here.
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They're not leaving.
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They don't have any insider information.
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And the volcano isn't going to explode right now.
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Oh my gosh.
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So anyway, I've just had a really good laugh about that this
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so you can like, what in the heck?
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What a funny thing.
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But it did spur a bigger conversation between John and I
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because a lot of those videos, you know,
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in the National Parks Services coming back
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and the Yellowstone nonprofits are coming back
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and they're all posting just saying,
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Hey, not true.
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And a lot of those videos are AI.
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Right.
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They're not even real videos.
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I know, like you can tell when their tails
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are in the wrong place or the toes are going
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the wrong direction.
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But sometimes they're not.
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And that's the thing.
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I think that when you're looking for information,
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it's hard sometimes to tell, but a lot of it is AI
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and AI generated.
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Even the wording and the captions and everything like,
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gosh, my gosh, it's all over the place.
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Just so much misinformation.
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Yeah.
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Because it gets clicks, it gets so many clicks.
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People are like, the bison are leaving Yellowstone.
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Yeah.
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What?
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I know.
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Even I clicked on it.
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I was like, this is what I've never heard anything like this.
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I got duped.
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I know.
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I fell for it.
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It's hard.
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It's tricky to know like what sources to trust sometimes.
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So anyways, we just want to put in a little plug for ourselves.
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Insert plug here because we don't AI generate anything.
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Right.
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I use like grammarly to check my grammar when I'm writing.
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We have a couple of keywording programs and stuff like that.
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But all of the information that we are posting on social and
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YouTube, everything podcast, it's all us.
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Right.
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So I just want you to know, I don't like AI.
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I use it sparingly, very sparingly because I want you to know,
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you're getting information from an actual person who has been there,
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who has seen it, who has experienced it, who's done all the things.
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So anyway, and you know where to go to get like trusted information and
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good information.
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You're kind of in the loop with the National Park Service.
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Yeah.
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And like any AI use that we do is just very task oriented.
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It's not aimed at generating the content that we share with you to help you
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enjoy your experience because the only information we know we can trust is
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the information that's in our heads.
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I know how funny is that sometimes asked us.
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People that we know that we trust.
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Yeah.
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And ashtasn't even trust the information that comes from my head most of the time.
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Hey, when we're recording these podcasts, if any of you like, especially fun
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facts, sometimes John will say something and I'll just give him this look like
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across the microphones like really John.
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Is that true?
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And then I look back at her with the steaming glare.
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Of course, it's true.
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I researched this.
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I know what I'm talking about.
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And I'll stop him and I'll like fact check him sometimes.
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And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right.
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Okay.
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Sorry.
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My dad every once in a while, she'll catch me in something that might need a
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little bit more context than I'm willing to go into.
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Yeah.
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It's more like the, he'll say something.
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I'll be like, no, that parking lot doesn't feel, you know, early.
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It's okay.
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They can go at that time or, you know, it's like something like that.
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I'm on the trip planning mindset and he's on the science mindset.
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And sometimes they don't, they don't coincide.
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Yeah.
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Sometimes that is the truth.
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Anyway, that's our plug.
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But I thought that was hilarious that people were saying that all the animals were
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leaving Yellowstone.
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Yeah.
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What a good laugh.
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Oh my gosh.
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So funny.
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Nope.
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There's still there.
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You can see him seven days a week.
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They're still on the job.
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Yep.
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Oh my gosh.
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But Ash, I have to tell you, I am very excited about today.
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I am super excited about today because well, actually, how science
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are we getting today?
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You know, I think you might be surprised at how this isn't going to be like the
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tour that we talked about in the exploring mammoth cave.
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That's what I was worried about.
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I'm like, please not a full hour of geology.
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No.
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We got to do a little bit though.
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Well, for sure.
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Absolutely.
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Geology is a big part of mammoth cave.
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Yeah.
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So honestly, October is like the perfect month for me to want to do a cave.
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It's just the right month.
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I don't know.
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Halloween is in this month.
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Okay.
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And I love Halloween.
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Mammoth cave is haunted.
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Yeah.
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Exactly.
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It's true.
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It's true.
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And every time we do one of our haunted episodes, which is coming up, we're
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doing another one this year.
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There's like always a story we could share from mammoth cave.
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There's a bunch of haunted mammoth cave stories.
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I know.
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It's going to be fun this year.
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Anyway, even if you don't visit in October, it's still haunted, haunted year
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rounds.
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Yeah, just like the animals and y'all still there.
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They're your round.
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They're always there.
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But I think I'm so excited to start out this episode talking about mammoth cave
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because I'm just so excited to talk about the minds of Moria.
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Oh boy.
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I mean, mammoth cave national part.
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My real question should have been, how nerdy are we getting this fun,
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fags episode?
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I always think that I could go more and I hold myself back.
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So, so we'll see.
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But seriously, you had to know that the minds of Moria, we're probably going to
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come up today.
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There's really only three options.
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mammoth cave, carls, bad caverns or wind cave and mammoth cave definitely has
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more minds of Moria on beyond.
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So I would say for sure, ash is afraid to go into those mines.
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The door of stealth too greedily and too deep.
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She knows what they awoke in the darkness of Casadoum shadow and flame.
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So excited.
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If you don't know what I'm talking about, the minds of Moria are from the Lord of the Rings.
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That's what I'm referencing probably the most epic cave in all of literature ever.
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Any human story ever told with a cave are you waiting for me to to disagree?
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Yes, I was looking at me with that face.
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So like dare to disagree with me ash.
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Oh, I'm not.
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I'm not.
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I'm good.
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If you're not familiar with the Lord of the Rings story, I'll catch you up real fast.
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A small group of heroes are on a secret mission to destroy a magical, but evil object.
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And there is only one place where it can be destroyed.
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Along their journey, they encounter a huge obstacle, the misty mountains.
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At which point they have three options.
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They can either go around the mountains, which is probably the shortest and easiest route.
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But probably the most dangerous because it takes them right past an evil wizard who wants the object for himself.
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Or they have two other options.
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They can either climb up and over the mountains, or they can travel under them through the minds of Moria.
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Long story short, they end up going through the mines, but it's a dangerous four day journey to the other side.
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And things do not go as planned.
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But I love this part of the movie.
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I was listening to like the ambiance from the music for this part of the movie for like the whole time that I was preparing for this episode.
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But I can't think of a better comparison to mammoth cave than the minds of Moria.
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There are a few other comparisons that I'm sure will come up through today's episode.
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But the complex and rich history of Moria, the sheer size and the endless passageways, it really only has one parallel to reality, which is mammoth cave.
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And that made me sound a little crazy parallel to reality.
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Moria has been used by all kinds of people for thousands of years.
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mammoth cave has been used by all kinds of people for thousands of years.
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It's been mine for minerals just like mammoth cave.
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People have fought wars over it.
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There have been cave wars around mammoth cave.
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Mammoth cave doesn't have a whole lot of decorations, which we kind of talked about in the exploration episode.
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Moria doesn't really seem to have a whole lot of decorations.
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The scene right after they enter Moria, the rocks come crashing down behind them.
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The lights go out.
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There's a three-minute section of that first movie where they might as well be in mammoth cave.
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I'm telling you because Gandalf lights up his staff and then he quietly instructs the group to be on their guard
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because there are older and fowler things than orcs in the deep places of the world.
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And it's at that point that the film zooms out and you see just how expansive Moria is.
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Passage way after passageway, big rooms, small rooms, tight passages, deep pits, sheer cliffs.
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And at a certain point, the path leads the group, alarmingly close to the edge of it endless drop-off.
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And at this point Gandalf stretches out his staff over the edge so that the group can see just how vast
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and deep the cave really is. The light from his staff reveals layer after layer,
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level after level, deeper and deeper until the light fades away off into the distance.
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That, my friends, is mammoth cave.
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Ah, an endless labyrinth of tunnels and caves going off in all directions.
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An adventure that takes you from the comfort and light and warmth of the surface and leads you deep
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into the cold, dark and often uncomfortable, unknown.
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I'm just so excited.
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It's true though. It's true. I see the parallels. I'm with you on this.
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Okay, perfect. But let's get to some fun facts so that this doesn't all just seem like
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riddles in the dark if you catch that reference.
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Nope. No idea.
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Okay, fun fact number one. And I'm only going to give you half of it at first ash.
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Is that mammoth cave is the longest cave system in the world.
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Isn't that crazy? Right. You're in America.
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Yeah, Kentucky.
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It's right in Kentucky.
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Yeah.
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I love it. Now, it's really cool to say that it's the longest cave system in the world.
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But really without some context, you don't really realize how big it really is.
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So here's some context for you.
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The world's top 10 longest cave systems.
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Number 10, Fisher Ridge cave in Kentucky as well, 131 miles.
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Okay.
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Number nine, let's you get cave New Mexico.
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That one's by Carl's bed.
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Yep, 150 miles.
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Okay.
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Number eight, clear water cave in Malaysia.
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It's 159.
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I don't know how to pronounce this one.
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Optimus China cave 164 miles.
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That's in Ukraine.
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And then two of our favorites,
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went cave and jewel cave in South Dakota.
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Those are 167 and 220 miles.
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Schwanghi cave in China, 259.
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And then you got two in Mexico.
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These are interesting because they're underwater caves.
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But sec actune is 234.
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And ox bellhaw is 308 miles.
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Okay.
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Then you get to number one.
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So number two is 308.
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Correct.
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Yeah.
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mammoth cave is 426 miles.
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That's like the entire number 10.
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Yeah, it's like a third of a third more
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than the next closest cave.
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I know.
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It's not even close.
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It just blows the other caves out of the water.
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Completely.
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And 426 miles.
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That's actually longer,
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depending on how you measure.
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That's longer than the state of Kentucky itself.
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Right.
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Because when you're looking at caves,
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you're looking at layers of passages.
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Kind of like what you mentioned with Moria.
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You know, it's like there was layers
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upon layers of places you could go.
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Right.
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And that's how these caves are.
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And that's why there can be so many miles
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in a relatively small area because it's layers.
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It's honeycombed.
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This place is incredible.
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And we'll kind of get to some of that in a few minutes
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and some of these other fun facts.
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But my question is,
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how did it get there?
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Like what is so special about this little pocket of the country
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where Kentucky has two of the world's longest caves?
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Yeah, that is crazy.
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And mammoth cave four times longer,
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basically, than the other one.
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And so I don't know.
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It's so cool.
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But the truth is it's cool,
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but it's also concerning.
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Because it makes you wonder,
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like what's underneath me?
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Yeah, I mean,
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I don't think I ever thought about that question very much.
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I don't think I really internalized the first few times I was there
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just that this was even the longest cave in the world.
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Right.
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I think it's the biggest one in the country.
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Maybe, you know,
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I mean, I know the passages are big.
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Like, just when you're standing in one,
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how tall and wide the passages are.
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But I wasn't thinking about the length
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and how much of the cave was actually there.
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Right.
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Now that I've internalized that more,
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it's just like, it's insane.
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It's insane that there can be 400 miles of cave,
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400 plus miles of cave in this area.
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And then if you go in the visitor center
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and you start internalizing that,
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then you'll start to see things like why?
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Yeah.
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Well, and what's amazing is
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the cave tours that you can take,
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you're only exploring a teeny, tiny percentage
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of the entire expanse of the cave.
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Yeah, because the Grand Avenue tour,
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which is the longest one that's not the wild one,
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where you're just kind of, you know,
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squeezing through passages.
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It's like an actual Ranger-led walking tour.
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That one's four hours and four miles.
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Yeah.
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And that's a very long tour.
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And it's a very long time to be in the cave.
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Yeah.
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And you're four miles out of one percent.
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Yeah.
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One percent.
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And a lot of the explorers that are still mapping
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and surveying cave passages,
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a lot of them have been quoted as,
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there's no end in sight, you guys.
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We're still going.
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Well, and how do they do that?
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Because at some point, you get deep enough
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that you can't just like go in and find something new
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in a day or two.
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Right.
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It's like you're backpacking and you're spending
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so much time in the cave
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as you work your way through newer areas
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that haven't been discovered yet.
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Just like Gandalf said,
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it's a four-day journey to the other side.
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Yeah, longer than that if I'm at cave.
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Yeah.
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On a good trail, you know,
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you and I might do 15 to 20 miles
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if we weren't carrying a super heavy backpack
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and things like that.
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But going through cave passages?
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Totally different.
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Yeah.
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Oh my gosh.
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That'd be insane.
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Okay.
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So let's get back to where this cave came from.
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And what makes this part of the world so special?
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There's a term we need to learn and it's called,
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Cursed.
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And we've experienced Cursed
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and lots of different places.
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You can see Cursed actually at the Everglades.
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You can see Cursed in places around the world.
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It's a type of landscape
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where the bedrock dissolves.
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Okay.
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And so you might not even know it's happening
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and underneath you,
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which is why I think it's a little bit concerning.
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But there are some telltale signs
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that you're in a cursed landscape.
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Sinkholes?
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Yes.
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Sinkholes are a big one.
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And so if you ever see like at Man with Cave,
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they often show you aerial views of the landscape.
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So you can actually see how kind of
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pock marked and pothold
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and sink hold the whole landscape look.
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Yeah, they have a whole display at the visitor center
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where you can see they call it
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like the surface of Kentucky
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is like the surface of a golf ball.
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Uh-huh.
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Where it just has little divots
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all over the place.
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And yeah, you can see it, you know,
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in the visitor center,
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they kind of show you where and show pictures
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and have a display about it.
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And once I knew what I was looking at,
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because like I said, I'd been there a couple times
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and just didn't even really understand
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what I was looking at.
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But once I knew and I saw that again,
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it is a little scary.
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I'm not going to lie.
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I'm not going to buy a house there.
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Like, well, I guess if you were on one of the ridges
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that was in between the pock marks maybe,
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but yeah, there is,
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like there are a ton of divots
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in the surface of Kentucky.
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Yeah.
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Like a golf ball.
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It's really cool, especially when you know
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that you're looking for that
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and you're driving to Man with Cave
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and you're seeing all this farmland and things like that.
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You can see the contours of the land.
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It's really interesting,
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but there are some other tail-tale signs as well.
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Some of them are like water disappearing,
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like streams that just kind of disappear
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into the ground,
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or rivers that do the same thing.
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And then some other places where water just like
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comes out of a hill.
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Yeah.
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And different springs and things like that.
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It's really interesting.
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But in order to have a cast landscape like this,
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you have to have the right ingredients.
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And cast is usually associated with soluble rocks
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like limestone, marble, and gypsum.
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So let's go back 330 million years.
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Ash, where was Man with Cave and most of Kentucky?
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Under a shallow sea.
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Do you need anything?
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Correct.
spk_0
Our favorites are under a shallow sea.
spk_0
When you're under a shallow sea,
spk_0
there's something very specific that happens
spk_0
in regards to geology,
spk_0
deposition.
spk_0
Minerals and sediments slowly and softly
spk_0
settle to the bottom of the sea.
spk_0
And over time, they cement together
spk_0
into a strong and sturdy layer of rock.
spk_0
You can also get a lot of sea creatures like coral
spk_0
that build up over time and add to and become part of those layers.
spk_0
Well, the glue that held those layers
spk_0
and minerals and sediments and corals
spk_0
and all the sea creatures together
spk_0
and formed them into one big, strong layer,
spk_0
the cement that did that is calcium carbonate.
spk_0
And when calcium carbonate acts as that cementing force,
spk_0
then we call it limestone.
spk_0
And layer after layer of this limestone
spk_0
built up over more than 10 million years
spk_0
until something in the environment changed.
spk_0
The sea level changed.
spk_0
The sea level dropped.
spk_0
And then the sea level came back up
spk_0
and then the sea level dropped.
spk_0
And then it came back up.
spk_0
There was a river that shifted its course.
spk_0
And so all of a sudden you have right over the top of Man with Cave,
spk_0
a river delta depositing tons and tons of different sediments
spk_0
all around the area of Kentucky.
spk_0
And so the sea level shifts created more of a shale.
spk_0
And the river created a sandstone.
spk_0
And the shifting between the two,
spk_0
the top as you explore Man with Cave today,
spk_0
as you go around the surface,
spk_0
what you'll see if you see any of the kind of exposed rock,
spk_0
generally speaking, you're seeing like layers
spk_0
of mixed shale and sandstone.
spk_0
And that kind of acts as the cap rock
spk_0
on top of all of that 10 million years worth of limestone.
spk_0
But as we've explored the country,
spk_0
as we've been to a lot of different national parks,
spk_0
we've seen lots of different kinds of rock
spk_0
and how it reacts.
spk_0
Limestone and sandstone are totally different.
spk_0
They react totally different to different types of things.
spk_0
And the shale as well will react differently.
spk_0
Sandstone is kind of porous.
spk_0
And so it kind of lets water through.
spk_0
But shale is basically waterproof.
spk_0
The sandstone and the shale together
spk_0
made this really strong and waterproof shield
spk_0
over the top of all of this limestone.
spk_0
And then what's kind of amazing is that nothing happened to it
spk_0
for like 300 million years.
spk_0
Not really.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Like Kentucky itself,
spk_0
all of Kentucky is missing more than 200 million years of geologic history.
spk_0
It all eroded away.
spk_0
Maybe there were glacier.
spk_0
We don't know exactly what happened
spk_0
because there's nothing there for 200 million years.
spk_0
And other sections like this mammoth cave area
spk_0
are missing even more.
spk_0
Because as you explore the area,
spk_0
all you have is that 310 year old shale and sandstone
spk_0
on top of 330 million year old limestone.
spk_0
It's basically all you have.
spk_0
Interesting.
spk_0
But then something changed about 10 to 15 million years ago.
spk_0
Suddenly water that had been held back
spk_0
by that waterproof shale layer started to break through.
spk_0
Not everywhere, only in a few places here and there,
spk_0
like the leaking of a faucet.
spk_0
Drips and drops of rain found their way
spk_0
through the sandstone and shale layers
spk_0
above the limestone in very specific spots.
spk_0
But the rain picked up something very special
spk_0
as it fell from the sky and seeped through the rocks and soil.
spk_0
Carbon dioxide.
spk_0
And when you add carbon dioxide to water,
spk_0
it becomes slightly acidic,
spk_0
sometimes even fizzy like soda.
spk_0
And it's called carbonic acid.
spk_0
And if you add 23 flavors,
spk_0
ash has her favorite mommy drink.
spk_0
Dr. Bedbury.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
And all of this becomes very important
spk_0
once this slightly acidic water reaches the limestone layer.
spk_0
If you remember back, limestone is cemented together
spk_0
by calcium carbonate.
spk_0
The kryptonite of calcium carbonate is carbonic acid.
spk_0
We've experienced this battle between carbonic acid
spk_0
and calcium carbonate in caves all over the country.
spk_0
That's a very normal way to make caves.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
But remember, only a few drips and drops
spk_0
are getting through at this point.
spk_0
It's not like we're stabbing Superman
spk_0
with a spear made from kryptonite,
spk_0
or simply lightly misting it,
spk_0
like Lex Luthor playing the long game.
spk_0
So for a couple million years,
spk_0
we have drips and drops of slightly acidic acid,
spk_0
seeping into the limestone,
spk_0
navigating through any crack it can find on its journey.
spk_0
And all the while,
spk_0
it's doing just a little bit of work.
spk_0
One drop at a time,
spk_0
navigating through rocks,
spk_0
navigating through cracks and crevices,
spk_0
dissolving little bits along the way
spk_0
so that the path is larger and easier for the next drip,
spk_0
which makes it larger and easier for the next drip, and so on.
spk_0
Until the cracks and crevices have dissolved enough
spk_0
to now make a chute or a tube,
spk_0
and then after a few more million years enough water
spk_0
is getting through the shale and sandstone at the top,
spk_0
that it widens into a depression like a sinkhole.
spk_0
And then the chutes of the limestone turn into channels,
spk_0
and then eventually after several million years,
spk_0
a lot of different chutes and channels,
spk_0
from the surface come together underground,
spk_0
deep in the limestone,
spk_0
and connect with one another to create underground tunnels,
spk_0
with literal rivers running through them,
spk_0
that keep doing the work of dissolving the limestone.
spk_0
So the tunnels keep getting larger and larger,
spk_0
and if you have been to mammoth cave,
spk_0
you can see that some of these tunnels are easily large enough
spk_0
to drive a semi-truck through them.
spk_0
Yeah, it's crazy.
spk_0
It's incredible.
spk_0
Oh my gosh, the dissolving power of this
spk_0
slightly acidic water over time is so cool.
spk_0
That's why they call caves that form in this way.
spk_0
They call them solution caves,
spk_0
because it's all about the dissolving power
spk_0
and the soluble rocks and things that kind of,
spk_0
they create a solution, kind of like a tonic,
spk_0
or a soda water, kind of a thing.
spk_0
I don't know, I think the name is kind of confusing,
spk_0
because the word solution has multiple meanings.
spk_0
They should call it like a potion cave,
spk_0
or something like that, because...
spk_0
They're definitely more along the lines of your imagination.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
A potion cave.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
But the story's not over there.
spk_0
If that was the whole story, that would be cool enough.
spk_0
If that was the whole story,
spk_0
then you would have something more similar
spk_0
to what all the other caves look like.
spk_0
Exactly. It'd be more too dimensional.
spk_0
If that was the whole story.
spk_0
But you talked about earlier how there's so many different layers.
spk_0
And it's kind of like it's a honeycomb,
spk_0
it's a three-dimensional cave.
spk_0
So for this next part,
spk_0
we get to talk about two of my favorite things
spk_0
when I was 11 years old.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Ice cream and one of my favorite computer games.
spk_0
And this is a famous line from it.
spk_0
Hello, my friend.
spk_0
Stay a while and listen.
spk_0
I just woke up a bunch of gamers from 1997
spk_0
because in 1997,
spk_0
Diablo was one of the best-selling games of the year.
spk_0
And I had to play it at my friend Peter's house
spk_0
because it was a little dark for my house.
spk_0
Your mom wouldn't allow it in her house.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
But 1997 was a good year.
spk_0
Tub Thumping by Chamba Wamba came out.
spk_0
Nice.
spk_0
Same with Men in Black.
spk_0
You'll really like this one.
spk_0
Everybody.
spk_0
Backstreet boys.
spk_0
Yeah, exactly.
spk_0
Come on.
spk_0
That was not nearly excited enough.
spk_0
Well, I didn't want to sing.
spk_0
I'm not feeling my singing voice.
spk_0
Oh, okay.
spk_0
As long as you loved me, it was honestly.
spk_0
Backstreet boys.
spk_0
There we go.
spk_0
I love the backstreet boys.
spk_0
Oh, I know.
spk_0
That's so good.
spk_0
There we go.
spk_0
All right.
spk_0
So anyways, back to ice cream.
spk_0
In ash, I know you love ice cream
spk_0
so you can help me out with this.
spk_0
I prefer ice cream in a cup.
spk_0
I never get it in the cones.
spk_0
Even the classy waffle cone kinds.
spk_0
I just don't think they're that good.
spk_0
Ash, on the other hand,
spk_0
loves a good waffle cone.
spk_0
And that is the only reason that they are not a big waste of money and calories.
spk_0
Because it gives my wife joy.
spk_0
But John's not allowed to buy one because they always cost extra and he doesn't appreciate it.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
Which is why our kids did not get lobster in a cadia.
spk_0
They do not appreciate it.
spk_0
Nope.
spk_0
They were like,
spk_0
it's okay.
spk_0
And we're like, okay, no lobster for you.
spk_0
Cost way too much to only kind of like it.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
For this example, the work you have to eat the ice cream my way in a cup with a spoon.
spk_0
I bet just about everybody who has ever eaten ice cream has had this exact experience.
spk_0
As long as the person dishing the ice cream wasn't too uh,
spk_0
skimpy or stingy on the scoops.
spk_0
So anyways, ash, you've got the ice cream and you've got the spoon.
spk_0
As the ice cream melts, what are the best practices for eating said ice cream?
spk_0
You got to go around the edge where it's melting and get it before it turns to liquidy.
spk_0
And then it like just pours over the side and makes a giant mess, right?
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Oh, that's perfect.
spk_0
That's exactly what I was hoping.
spk_0
You take this spoon and you make kind of a moat around the main ice cream scoop.
spk_0
That way you don't make a mess.
spk_0
And as the ice cream continues to melt, you keep digging out the moat around the main body of ice cream.
spk_0
And it generally just keeps getting deeper and deeper.
spk_0
And you really love the ice cream.
spk_0
It's so good.
spk_0
That is basically what is happening at mammoth cave.
spk_0
As the water was doing work and dissolving tunnels and channels underground,
spk_0
it was also doing regular stuff on the surface, creating ponds, streams, creeks, rivers,
spk_0
everything like that.
spk_0
Oh, so you have the main bulk of the rock.
spk_0
See if I'm right.
spk_0
See if I'm following.
spk_0
Oh, I'm excited.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
If you have the main bulk of the rock, kind of in the middle,
spk_0
like the ice cream scoop that hasn't melted yet.
spk_0
And then you have all the water and all the stuff kind of melting off and sitting.
spk_0
You have water around the edges.
spk_0
Yep.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
You're crushing it.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
So that's exactly what happens.
spk_0
All the water rushes off the surface and gathers in the rivers and the
spk_0
moat around the main body of land at mammoth cave.
spk_0
spk_0
And then the rivers take it to the Ohio River, which takes it to the Mississippi,
spk_0
all the way up to the ocean.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
So the water really is on quite a journey.
spk_0
Now, in this case, we're talking about mammoth cave and about the green river,
spk_0
which goes right through mammoth cave National Park.
spk_0
You talked about kayaking on the last episode.
spk_0
No, no, no, no.
spk_0
This is messing with my brain because now that I'm thinking about, that's a big river.
spk_0
And it's got to be going on top of the cave.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
Keep going.
spk_0
400 miles of cave.
spk_0
Like, there's no way that river is not flowing on top of a cave.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
Let's talk about this for a second.
spk_0
Well, maybe we'll get there.
spk_0
It's a big river and it's right next to the cave entrance.
spk_0
I mean, it's.
spk_0
Yep.
spk_0
What?
spk_0
A hundred yards away.
spk_0
It's really not that far.
spk_0
Probably it's really close.
spk_0
It's amazing.
spk_0
You have to imagine the surface water is like the ice cream.
spk_0
But the ice cream example doesn't give us any information about what's happening underground.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
With the water and how it relates to that river because
spk_0
the green river controls something that brings me to that computer game Diablo.
spk_0
As the river carves deeper and deeper into the earth,
spk_0
it causes the water table to drop with it
spk_0
because all of the water in the land wants to drain to the lowest possible point, right?
spk_0
And so water likes to go with the flow, likes to go with gravity as it pulls it out of the land.
spk_0
And then it takes it to the river and out to the ocean.
spk_0
So how does that relate to the computer game?
spk_0
The ice cream taught us about the surface.
spk_0
In the game Diablo.
spk_0
Let me just kind of give it a little intro here.
spk_0
You choose your character and you start out wandering around and meeting people in the sad little town
spk_0
called Tristram.
spk_0
You quickly learn that terrible things happened here.
spk_0
And as a hero, you try to help them.
spk_0
But helping them means that you put yourself in danger by fighting the evil that turned
spk_0
this once prosperous town into nothing more than ruins.
spk_0
And so you go on mission after mission doing things for different townspeople
spk_0
and each time you go on a new mission to find a certain object or to defeat a certain creature,
spk_0
you end up going underground.
spk_0
You start at the ground level in the cathedral and then your mission takes you down the stairs
spk_0
to the dungeons.
spk_0
And after you complete that mission, your objective changes again and soon you go even deeper
spk_0
into the catacombs.
spk_0
And when you finish there, the objective yet again changes and you find yourself deeper
spk_0
underground wandering the many passageways of caves.
spk_0
Ultimately the game takes you through four main levels that take you deeper and deeper into
spk_0
the underworld as you follow your missions and chase your goals, the dungeons, the catacombs,
spk_0
the caves, and then you reach the lowest and final level.
spk_0
But I won't spoil that for you in case you want to play it for yourself.
spk_0
But it's intense.
spk_0
But in this underground story of water in mammoth cave,
spk_0
the surface water acts like the melted ice cream and the underground water follows the hero's
spk_0
story in Diablo.
spk_0
As the green river digs its canes deeper and deeper, so too do the little drops of carbonic acid.
spk_0
They dig out and dissolve out the limestone, massive tunnels.
spk_0
They make it easy for rivers of water to empty out into the green river.
spk_0
But if the green river drops far enough, those tunnels become dry as a bone.
spk_0
Yeah, which is why we can walk through them now.
spk_0
Exactly, because the water abandons these higher tunnels as soon as they become obsolete.
spk_0
And if the green river drops too far, like the mission has changed,
spk_0
the water now has to carve new deeper tunnels and find new cracks and crevices to dissolve
spk_0
into wider and bigger passages and it has to start all over again.
spk_0
Which brings me to fun fact number two.
spk_0
Fun fact number two is that there are currently five distinct levels,
spk_0
or passageways within mammoth cave, four abandoned fossil levels,
spk_0
plus the modern river level, which is the lowest level located over 300 feet beneath the surface.
spk_0
So to answer your question, what do you think the answer to your question is?
spk_0
I think that as the green river drops with gravity and carbs, then it...
spk_0
I don't think it has caves underneath it.
spk_0
I think it is determining the level of where the caves are at.
spk_0
Correct. There are tons and tons of passageways, because the water,
spk_0
it's not just like highways finding straight lines here and there.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
The drips and drops of carbonic acid water, they have to follow existing cracks
spk_0
that's already in the limestone and it takes it...
spk_0
It's like crazy hair day when you're in third grade.
spk_0
There is this girl that had wires in her hair and the hair is just going everywhere.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
The cracks are all over the place, all different directions,
spk_0
but they do have distinct levels.
spk_0
And they're trying to work their way with gravity too.
spk_0
So as the water levels drop, that water is all trying to get down to where the river is.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
You can see that when you hike to the river stick spring,
spk_0
you can see where the river is coming out of the caves and meeting up,
spk_0
going down into the green river from there.
spk_0
So, I guess I never thought about how much carving that river,
spk_0
the green river has probably done.
spk_0
Because now I'm thinking about it, I'm like, well, yeah, you are kind of up higher than the river,
spk_0
you're hiking higher, you're in the cave higher.
spk_0
You know, and so you're way higher than the river in some of the cave levels.
spk_0
And the river itself is itself carving through limestone.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
It's just on the surface limestone.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And so it's doing a lot of work, but it's just like Diablo,
spk_0
you have the dungeons and then you descend to the catacombs and then you get to the caves.
spk_0
And you keep going down, level after level.
spk_0
And it's just like in a lot of ways, it's like Greek mythology,
spk_0
because in Greek mythology, there are five rivers that connect in the center of the underworld
spk_0
in Hades, which is why we call one of the rivers the river Sticks.
spk_0
And what's so cool, this kind of jumps ahead to some of the human history of the cave,
spk_0
the river Sticks in mammoth cave, they actually used to take boat tours on that river.
spk_0
Yeah, I know.
spk_0
I know.
spk_0
And in Greek mythology, like if someone passed away, they thought that in order for their
spk_0
soul to reach the afterlife, they had to take a ferry on the river Sticks in order to transport
spk_0
their soul safely to the underworld. Otherwise, they would haunt the shores and haunt the living
spk_0
until Hades gave them a reprieve.
spk_0
But it's not just the river Sticks.
spk_0
There's at least four different rivers that I found.
spk_0
I wasn't able to find like a complete list or a full map.
spk_0
It's so hard to get a full map of mammoth cave.
spk_0
spk_0
There's at least four different rivers on the bottom river level of mammoth cave.
spk_0
And that's what's crazy is that there is a river level at mammoth cave.
spk_0
There are rivers flowing at the bottom of the cave that we know it today.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
So the river Sticks, I know the echo river.
spk_0
What are the other ones?
spk_0
So do they have names?
spk_0
Yes. So you have the river Sticks.
spk_0
You have the echo river.
spk_0
There's roaring river.
spk_0
And there's river Akaron.
spk_0
Yeah. I've never heard of those other two.
spk_0
Yeah. Akaron is actually another Greek mythological name.
spk_0
Okay.
spk_0
It's one other one of those underworld rivers.
spk_0
Cool.
spk_0
It's so cool.
spk_0
It's just so much fun.
spk_0
I just love this cave.
spk_0
Especially if you have an active imagination.
spk_0
Like the cave environment here is just it's overwhelming.
spk_0
There's so many ideas you can have.
spk_0
And so many cool adventures you can have as you're drawn deeper and deeper into this cave
spk_0
underworld.
spk_0
And it's just so much fun.
spk_0
Which brings us to fun fact number three.
spk_0
So we're going to leave the science behind.
spk_0
I think we've got a good grasp.
spk_0
I know we've been talking about science for a long time.
spk_0
But now I think we have a really good grasp of how everything formed.
spk_0
Well, one more thing before we leave then.
spk_0
Because I did learn this on the River Stix tour that I've been griping about
spk_0
because we got to see the river right which was awesome.
spk_0
But so most caves you know they do have the solution.
spk_0
The potion caves.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
Exactly.
spk_0
Where the acid is interacting with the stone, the limestone.
spk_0
Well, at mammoth cave and this is where I think it is unique.
spk_0
I've never heard anyone else tell me this has happened in their cave,
spk_0
but not to say it doesn't happen in other caves.
spk_0
But you had passageways carved by the regular process, right?
spk_0
The carbonic acid and stuff.
spk_0
But then the rivers are what really came through and just opened up the spaces.
spk_0
So they're so massive.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
Right.
spk_0
So it was bull.
spk_0
Yeah, the acid is doing chemically erosion.
spk_0
But the rivers are also doing just regular erosion.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
And so that's why like as you're walking through mammoth cave and you're just looking and like
spk_0
holy smokes like these passages are huge.
spk_0
Bigger than anything I've ever seen.
spk_0
That's the river part of it.
spk_0
Yeah.
spk_0
Is the rivers actually came through running water
spk_0
and just like accelerated that erosion process.
spk_0
So anyway, you have to have bull for this cave.
spk_0
And that's why it's so mammoth.
spk_0
Anyway, I also want to point out that I think your fun fact number one broke a record
spk_0
for being the longest fun fact we've ever done in any fun fact.
spk_0
Well, it's because I had like 19 other fun facts today.
spk_0
And so I have a hard time.
spk_0
Yes, we only did one fun fact.
spk_0
But there's so many other things you have to learn in order to put it all together.
spk_0
Yep.
spk_0
Nope.
spk_0
I'm just giving you a hard time.
spk_0
But just know that if you're not a science lover like John,
spk_0
if you're more like me and it's like your eyes kind of start glazing over,
spk_0
sometimes if the science gets too heavy,
spk_0
that's not a normal length of fun fact.
spk_0
It's true.
spk_0
And I apologize because at the beginning you asked me how geology we were going to be doing.
spk_0
And here we are.
spk_0
Oh, but we're on fun fact number three and he promised less science.
spk_0
Yes.
spk_0
So fun fact number three, not sciencey.
spk_0
Nope.
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Okay.
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Well, you brought, you kind of transitioned us perfectly into it because you said
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this cave was just so mammoth.
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And I've never actually used a fun fact to disprove something before.
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So this is two new things.
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Longest first fun fact in history.
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And a fun fact used to disprove something.
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Okay.
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Fun fact number three is that no actual mammoth has ever been found in mammoth cave.
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Yes.
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And they talk about that on the Ranger tours because a lot of people
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their mind goes to the animal, the mammoth.
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Right.
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As to the namesake.
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Yeah, instead this is a metaphor for how huge this cave is.
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It's a yeah, it's a the Saurus definition for massive.
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Exactly.
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It's used to convey, convey sheer size.
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However,
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they may have not ever found a mammoth,
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but they have found a mastodon.
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Okay.
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Which is pretty similar to a mammoth.
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Yeah.
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But they have also made some other really cool discoveries.
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Some of the other cool fossils that they've found have been like ancient vampire bats
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or a saber tooth cat, giant short-faced bears.
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Mm-hmm.
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Huge like extinct armadillos.
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Okay.
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Which is cool, but my favorite and this really surprised me,
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sharks in mammoth cave.
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In mammoth cave.
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Cool.
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More than 40 different species of ancient sharks and shark relatives,
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six of which appear to be brand new to science.
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And so remember how we talked about how the limestone was formed in a shallow sea.
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Yeah.
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Well, all of these caves and tunnels,
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they've been protected and preserved
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so that as you wander through the passageways,
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it's like when you're in an aquarium and you kind of get to go through that glass hallway.
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Underneath and look up and all the...
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You're seeing all the exposed fossils from that time period.
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Yeah, and it's like they're swimming around you.
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Okay.
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And so you have all of these paleontologists that are going through some of these cave passageways.
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And they're so excited about sharks too.
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Because normally,
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it's pretty common to find shark teeth.
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Shark teeth are really hard and sharks have like a zillion teeth.
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Right.
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And so it's not unlikely to find shark teeth.
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But what is rare to find is stuff besides the teeth.
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Because most of a shark's body is cartilage.
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Right.
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Which decomposes quickly.
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So fast.
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It's soft to begin with.
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Yeah.
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And so it's really rare to have anything of a shark's body
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because it just decomposes so fast,
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300 million years ago.
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Yeah.
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But here at mammoth cave,
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they actually found two partial skeletons of sharks, cartilage skeletons of sharks.
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One of which is the first of its kind in the world.
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Why are they not showing me this on my tour?
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Because you probably have to go miles and miles into specific places.
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Yeah.
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Because like you've talked about,
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those rivers enlarged these caves really big.
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And probably took out a lot of stuff.
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Also in the exploring episode,
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I talked about how important it is to me to be in a smaller group size.
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Because sometimes the rangers will show you stuff like that.
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Absolutely.
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That's what's cool.
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Sometimes if you're walking up by the ranger and you're just walking
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between places where they'll stop and give their formal presentation,
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they know about stuff like that, like fossils you can see along the route and stuff like that.
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And they'll shine their flashlight up there for you if they like you.
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Right.
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That usually sometimes they just want to get through the tour.
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I used to, yeah, I was the ranger in a cave.
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And I can tell you sometimes,
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like if you have a good group with you,
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you just want to share everything.
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And you know a lot of things that you're not sharing in your formal tour.
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So, you know,
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stand by the ranger, get in one of those smaller groups,
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go stand by the ranger and see if they can show you anything.
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Or ask lots of questions.
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Because sometimes our kids will ask questions like,
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our oldest will be like,
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are there any fossils in this cave?
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And then the ranger will be like, come up by me and I'll show you one as we walk.
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You know, type of thing.
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They may have never found a mammoth in this cave.
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But they have found some really cool things.
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Like, and the fact that they've found so many sharks here.
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Next time I'm there, I want them to point something out the sharky.
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Yeah, you could at least ask.
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And they might know.
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Yeah.
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They might be able to show you something.
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And that's just the dead stuff.
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Yeah.
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There are tons of cool creatures here.
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Islasfish, sea-thru Kentucky cave shrimp,
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cave crickets, bats, crustaceans, and more.
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Some of which you can only find
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in the mammoth cave system and no other place on Earth.
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Yeah.
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It's so cool.
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You know, mammoth cave just isn't just a bunch of empty tunnels.
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The whole experience at mammoth cave can be so amazing.
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You just have to know the right tidbits of information.
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To like you said, prompt the ranger to be like,
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oh, I can share this with somebody.
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Mm-hmm.
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Yep.
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But some of these creatures, like some of these cave creatures,
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they play a really important role in the lives of people.
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And we're going to talk about those in the next two fun facts.
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We are going to spend two fun facts on the human history.
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It's worth two fun facts.
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It is because this place is great.
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There's so much going on here.
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I love geology and biology as much or more.
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More than an exorcist.
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More.
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Oh, but I'm human and I love human stories.
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And the human stories here just move me the highs and the lows.
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And this cave has played a role in so many people's lives.
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And I think it's worth spending a little extra time on.
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And I mean, just read the book Tom Sawyer,
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where Tom and Becky get lost in a cave.
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You can't tell me that wasn't inspired by mammoth cave.
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Or Jesse James and his gang.
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They actually robbed the mammoth cave stage coach.
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Oh, really?
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As people were going back and forth between the cave.
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And like Native American peoples,
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they used the cave.
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Some of them even used it as a burial ground.
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And they actually found some mummified remains of Native American peoples.
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The cave was used as a hospital, a church.
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It was a mine for different types of minerals like salt,
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Peter to make gunpowder and guano.
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People make guano or they used the guano.
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They used the guano.
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They didn't make the guano.
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But people have interacted with this cave for thousands of years.
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And I just thought it would be fun to share some of their stories.
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And so for fun fact number four, what I want you to know is that some of the heroes
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of mammoth cave were enslaved people.
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Yes.
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That's a huge part of the history of mammoth cave.
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Exactly.
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It's so interesting.
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It's hard to even comprehend.
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Kind of as our country's history has progressed.
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And we've taken Thomas Jefferson's word
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and applied them to as many people as possible.
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We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
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It's hard to even comprehend
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that a lot of the mining operations that happened in mammoth cave
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or a lot of the early tourist operations,
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a lot of the people that did the work there were actually leased to other people.
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Like a lot of these enslaved individuals were leased from their owners far away
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and sent to mammoth cave to do work.
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Like the fact that you can even lease somebody
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is ridiculous.
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Yeah.
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But the people that were leased
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or the people that were doing the work,
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they have amazing stories.
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And they're incredible people.
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Some of the people that their names have become synonymous with mammoth cave.
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Some of these enslaved individuals were as famous as the cave itself.
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Like Stephen Bishop.
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Yeah.
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Like people knew his name and they set it in the same sentence as mammoth cave
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all the time.
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Yeah.
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Because he was incredible.
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He was responsible for exploring most of the first 11 miles of mammoth cave.
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And he did it with a lantern.
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Yeah.
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Like one that would go out.
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And would leave you stranded if you got too far in and couldn't get back out.
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People told stories about him.
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He was so smart.
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He could have talked geology at any university in the country.
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He picked up things from scientists and politicians and nobility
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and people of all different walks of life that came to the cave
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and he would give them tours.
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And he was just like absorbing information off of everybody.
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And that enriched their experiences
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because he could then like point out all different kinds of things inside the cave.
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And well, the passages that he discovered were the main passages used for tours
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and still are.
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Exactly.
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So you're walking in his footsteps and the tours that he used to give.
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Those are the tours you're taking today too.
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Exactly.
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And park rangers nowadays kind of joke that if you're a park ranger at mammoth cave,
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you know more about Stephen Bishop than you do your best friends.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Because he's he's such a legend.
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He's a hero of mammoth cave.
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And there's one story that I just think is fantastic.
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So there was a gentleman that came to mammoth cave.
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One of the ways that the tour guides would make money is through tips.
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And so people would tip them to write their name on the wall or to do different things.
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Well, this gentleman was like Stephen,
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I'll offer you this fistful of money.
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If you take me to somewhere that no one has ever been inside the cave.
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And so as the story goes, Stephen Bishop thinks to himself, okay, where am I going to take this guy?
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And there was a pit that's still there today and it goes by the same name, bottomless pit.
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It's a 105 foot pit that was so deep and dark that torches would disappear if you threw them into
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this pit. And so the craziest idea occurred to Stephen and he said, he said, okay, I'm going to do this.
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He lashed a couple of ladders together and he laid it flat across the pit.
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And with the lantern in his teeth, he crawled across this ladder.
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And he made it to the other side where he could see there was a passageway on the over there.
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And he enticed the person to come with him to crawl across this makeshift little bridge made
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out of lashed together ladders. And they made it to the other side and they go in there and they
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discovered things that had never been seen before. They discovered so many things that you see on
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your tours today because somebody offered him just a handful of cash and he took this really cool
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crazy risk. And so I just thought that is amazing that he did that. On the other side of that pit,
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that's where you find like Fat Men's misery and Tall Men's agony, the relief hall and things
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like that. And that's where he found like River Sticks and the Echo Rivers and things like that.
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And it's all because he took a gambit and he wanted to he earned just a little bit of money.
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Yeah, got to get that fistful of cash. For all the work he's done. Absolutely.
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It's so cool. But one of the great things he did eventually gain his freedom. And he stayed at the cave
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and continued giving tours because he loved it so much. Yeah, he's buried there. So you can
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actually go see his grave along the heritage trail is where you'll find that. Yeah, a couple other
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people that I want to mention because they're so cool. Matt, Brandsford and Nick Brandsford. I don't
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believe they're related, but the reason they have the same last name is because a lot of times they
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would take the names of their owners. Right. And so Matt Brandsford, this is another thing that kind
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of goes back to the dignity of every human being. Him and his wife had kids, but the owner sold multiple
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of their kids far away and they never got to see him again. And he was just really sad. And he
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would give tours to people, but he eventually did gain his freedom as well. He was a hero. And then
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Nick, I don't know exactly why, but Nick didn't seem to get the feeling from his owner that he would
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ever just be given his freedom. So he actually asked the person. He said, what do I have to do in order
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to get my freedom papers? And his owner said, you give me 400 bucks. I'll give you your freedom.
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400 bucks. An impossible amount of money probably. And Nick was like $30 back then. And so what he would
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do is after he gave tours every night, he would sneak back into the cave, go down five layers
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into the bottom of the cave, get in a boat, and he would catch these eyeless fish or these
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crustaceans or whatever cave troglobites that were living down there. And he would sell them
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to the people he was giving tours to. And they would pay him a nickel or a dime. And he literally
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nickeled and dived his way to freedom. Wow. It's amazing. My gosh. What do you do with an eyeless fish
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that you buy? I don't know. And something that's really interesting, sad but cool at the same time.
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After he gained his freedom, he moved to Nashville. And he realized after he moved to Nashville,
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he's like, it doesn't matter that I'm free. People are still trading me pretty poorly. I had respect
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it, mammoth cave. I think because he realized it doesn't matter if you're famous, it doesn't matter
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if you're rich. It doesn't matter if you're European, nobility or royalty. Once you enter mammoth cave
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and you're in the dark and you've taken a few left turns. Right. You love your guide. You
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think that guy does the most important person to you. Exactly. Yeah. And so he actually left Nashville
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and he went back to mammoth cave because his life was just so much better there. And he was,
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and now that he was making money as a tour guide. And you know, he was a legend. He was a hero
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at mammoth cave. And I just think that's so cool. It is so cool. And so these guys are great. I
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love these heroes. And you can see a lot of their graves on the surface. There's a cemetery for
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the old guides. The old guides. Yeah. It's the old guide cemetery right on the surface. And it's
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a beautiful like boardwalk trail through the trees and stuff too. So it's just a really peaceful place.
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Yeah. And it's cool to know more about the people that are buried there. Yeah. And what's really
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cool is in like 2004, Matt Brandsbirds, great, great grandson started giving tours at mammoth cave.
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That's cool. So multi generational legacy. Yeah. Which was fun. Fun fact number five,
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we're going to lead into it with a story because I think in a lot of cases, history is actually
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cooler than legend or like history is cooler than myth. You know, we've talked about so many
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different myths of legend. You know, the supernatural, the cool things about being in the cave,
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right? But the second half of the 20th century was really cool here at mammoth cave from like
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1950 onward. There were some really cool things. If you look at the history of mammoth cave,
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it wasn't just mammoth cave itself. There were a whole bunch of other caves all around. And if
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you look on the park map, you can actually see roads to each of these different caves. And so it's
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really kind of interesting. But in 1955, there were some explorers that discovered something really
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cool. They found a connection between two of these caves. They found that crystal cave was actually
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connected to unknown cave. It's not the real name. Yeah, it's actually it's real. They unknown cave.
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Five years later in 1960, a bunch of other explorers, they found a connection between colossal cave
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and salts cave. And then in 1961, salts cave was connected to unknown cave. And so you have all
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of these what were previously thought to be just individual caves. As explorers really kind of
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surveyed and explored them, they found that they were all part of the same cave system. And so you
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have crystal unknown colossal and salts cave. They all came to be called the Flint Ridge cave system.
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And before 1972, that was actually the longest cave system in the world. It had like 86 miles of
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passageways and mammoth cave only had like 57. Okay. And so that was the cave system. But
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a lot of these explorers thought if we can connect all of these caves, there's got to be a
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connection somewhere, right? There's got to be a connection somewhere between the Flint cave system
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and the mammoth cave system. And so they spent years years and years exploring different new passageways
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squeezing through little holes in the rocks, trying to see if they could find anything anywhere
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where they might connect. Apparently, there's like an exploring season where a lot of these
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caves probably like when the water table is at its lowest. So that some of the passageways
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aren't flooded with water and they might be able to get through. In 1972, in September, it was
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supposed to be the last outing of the year. And these caves, they were in there and they spotted
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something that suddenly just like shook their whole world. There was a little mud embankment where
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they saw initials of a couple of explorers, Leo Hunt and Pete Hanson. And they knew they knew
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those guys were mammoth cabers. And so they thought, oh my gosh, how did they get here? But they'd
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already been in the cave for hours and hours now. They didn't have the resources to try to explore
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anymore. So a week later, they thought, let's give it one last shot. Let's see, let's try to make it
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back to where those initials were. And let's see if we can find the connection. And so on September
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9th, they entered the Flint Ridge side of the cave system. And for 12 hours, they went through
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little passages. They traced their path back to where they saw those initials. And they were so
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tired. I mean, they were on a mission. They wanted to get it done and they needed to, they all
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needed to get back. A lot of them were students and they needed to go back to school, you know,
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wherever they were across the country and things like that. And so after about 12 hours, it was a
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team of six people. And the leader of the group, they found the initials, but the passageway that
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they were thinking of exploring was all water. And so the leader was looking at his team of
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exhausted explorers. And he's like, let me get in there. Let me see if I can find anything. And so
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on his own, he wades into the water. He gets up to about as almost to his chest. And as a cavever,
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you really want to keep your chest dry to kind of keep you from getting hypothermia. And so that's
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why he was doing it by himself because he was getting really wet. He gets into the water and he
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keeps walking and he keeps walking. And a lot of times, if it's not going to lead anywhere,
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you just turn around really quickly, the people he was with, they wanted to know, are you, are you
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find anything? Because he just kept walking. He kept walking and he kept walking. And all of a sudden,
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the passageway that he was in, it just opened right up, surprisingly. And he's got the light on
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his, on his hard hat. And he's looking around and all of a sudden, he says, he sees the shadow
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of a really straight line going across the room. And he knows that doesn't naturally happen in,
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in case you don't have perfectly horizontal lines. And as his eyes focused, he started to notice
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that there were some vertical lines attaching to that shadow, perfectly vertical lines. And the more
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he looked, it was a walkway, it was a railing for a walkway. And so he's looking and his buddies
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on the other side of the of the water, they're like, what have you found? And he's like, it opened up.
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I can see a passageway. And so he walks, they walk over to it. They're in mammoth cave. And so,
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and one o'clock in the morning, and they've been caving for more than 12 hours. And where he,
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they came out, they call it Hanson's Lost River Connection. But what's amazing, they spent 12 hours
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meandering through the underworld of the Flint Ridge cave system. They came out into the mammoth cave
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system. And they took an elevator. They took an elevator back to the top. And no one was there
spk_0
because it was one o'clock in the morning. And they were just so excited. It was a group of six
spk_0
people just celebrating by themselves because they made mammoth cave, the largest cave system in the
spk_0
world that night. I think that's so cool. Yeah. And they have a video of it. You can actually look
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at it on YouTube where they tell this story. But it's like I can't even imagine struggling for 12
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hours through one side of the cave and literally taking an elevator out the other side. There's all
spk_0
these pathways. Oh, oh my gosh. And so fun fact number five is that September 9th, 1972, is the day
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that mammoth caves became the largest cave system in the world. Nice. And I think that's awesome.
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And it's held on to its status ever since. With no end in sight. No end in sight in nobody
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close to catching up. Nope. Not unless they can well even still it wouldn't be there. I was going to say
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not unless they can find the connection between dual cave and wind cave. Yeah, but the math doesn't
spk_0
even work there. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't. We asked Rangers about that last time we're in South Dakota
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because they're pretty close. It was like, are they gonna connect? Maybe you never know. But it's
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still wouldn't be longer than mammoth cave. I know. Mammoth cave is a behemoth. It is. It is a monster
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in terms of its size. And so I'm so glad. Thank you for joining us today for this episode. And
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as you know, thanks for being my bud along this one. My eyes didn't glaze over. It was the doozy
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there for a minute. But I was I hug on. I was doing good. And John will not like me for saying this.
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But he got Terry. I don't know. He was talking about the enslaved tour guides and how the the
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respect that they had at the cave that they wouldn't have gone other places. So anyway, cute. So cute.
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I know just so many stories. It really is a place that is just incredibly special. And I think
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that a lot of people just don't even realize how special it is. Even when you go through the cave
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a time or two. Yeah. It takes some digging. You got to peel back those layers. Exactly. We got to keep
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working your way down and deeper. Similar to just exploring the cave. Yeah. You learn more and you
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appreciate more. Exactly. So for today's task, I would say, what are you more excited about? Are you
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excited about seeing the river at the bottom? Are you excited about seeing the massive tubes? You
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can drive semi trucks through. Or are you excited about learning or the human experience that has
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been going on here for hundreds thousands of years? We barely scratched the surface. You can do all
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of those different things on different tours in mammoth cave. Yep. So many options. So head over to
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the dirt my shoes Facebook or Instagram page and chime in. We want to know. We want to hear about
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your experiences as well. Yeah. Just such a cool place. And you guys, you truly are the best
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for listening to this podcast and coming along this journey with us. We love having you here.
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Thank you for your reviews. We've been reading them. I wish we could comment on them
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where you leave them, but we can't. Right. Just have to read them and giggle. So you guys are the
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best. Here are people. We love you. Please leave us a five star review if you've been enjoying the
spk_0
podcast and go get some dirt in your shoes.
Topics Covered
Exploring National Parks
Dirt and My Shoes
National Park Trip Planning
Mammoth Cave
Yellowstone National Park
AI misinformation
hiking trails
park ranger tips
fun facts about caves
haunted places
Mines of Moria
cave exploration
family adventures in nature
outdoor activities
nature podcast
wildlife in national parks