Running the Roads-Aug.17

Drove through some pretty country today including some Amish farm country.  Saw a couple of buggies and a fellow on a horse.  Made it to Bowling Green  because we wanted to see Lost River Cave.  A neat place.  It is on Ripley's Belive It or Not register as the shortest and deepest river, both in the 400 feet catagory.  The only problem is that the water on the surface looks still, but there is a swift moving channel down below and the rock thrown in to measure the depth got caught in the current and dragged down stream!  It wasn't until the land passed into the local college's hands (many years later) that modern equipment was able to determine we were only looking at a couple of feet.  The cave has a wonderful history with both the Union and Confederacy using it, Jesse James using it as a hideout after robbing a local bank, and a local man using it as a club, complete with a ballroom during the first half of the last century.  It lost popularity with Rock & Roll and indoor airconditioning.  The land is much like WV with karst geology.  The valley was formed by the collapse of the roof of the big cave thousands of years ago.  The big flood in Nashville last May began in this area which had 63 feet of water in the ravine drainage.  The interesting guide took us in a boat into the cavern(which differs from a cave only by the use of the "r" and "n".) This type of cave doesn't have the "usual" formations of columns of minerals because it is all water and the regular flooding that occurs breaks off any formations that try to form.  We also looked into the butterfly habitat, a large greenhouse shaped building of windowscreening and planted with all types of flowers and full of butterflies.  All in all, a very good day of sightseeing.  Unfortunately, it was too dark to get good photos of the cave; our brains will have to keep these memories.