Last night, in the middle of the night, rain hit our campsite real hard, and unfortunately we didn't all make it through completely dry. On the bright side, today started out as a nice day! We have a rest day in Mammoth Cave National Park, so we took our time to get up and eat breakfast. Bill made some amazing breakfast burritos.
With the entire day free, we decided to go on the Grand Avenue Tour, a 4 mile 4.5 hour tour through Mammoth Cave, so after breakfast, we biked over to the Visitor Center to wait.
After a short school bus ride, we descended down maybe 50 steps into the cave.
As we walked those 4 miles, Autumn, our guide, taught us about the history of the cave and caving. Unfortunately, my camera is terrible, so I didn't get too many shots inside the cave itself, but we got to see lots of gypsum formations, signatures from the 1800s, canyons, holes in the ground, cave crickets, grapes, bacon, popcorn, and a cafe! We also got plenty of cave kisses (from the rainfall last night?)
I think what was really the most amazing thing, though, from the tour was feeling the size and complexity of the cave system first-hand. I can't begin to imagine what it must've been like to be Stephen Bishop, exploring the cave in the 1800s. Without all the electric lighting fixtures, the cave must've somehow felt even bigger than it felt to us today. There seemed to be an infinite number of endless paths all waiting to be explored. Inside the cave, it almost felt like a different world where you get to choose your own adventure.
post-cave tour lunch and nap.
So far, I think Spokes has been a lot like being in the cave, or at least it's been the most free-flowing adventure I've had in my life. Lots of other things in my life are fairly structured: school, classes, extracurriculars, sports, friends, family. In all of these, there are fairly standard set of rules/expectations/options for what you're allowed to do.
In Spokes, we get to make basically our own decisions, from what we're teaching to where we're going to what we're eating, to where we're going, and there aren't really any predetermined rules / norms for what we should or shouldn't do. If we want to be our weird selves that's completely fine (there's definitely a noticeable transition when we go from being alone to around "normal human beings"). If we want to play soccer in the pouring rain, we can run around the campsite and yell (at least until quiet hours).
pouring rain (sadly no pictures of the soccer game because we were soaked)
Even though I've only been biking for a week (feels way longer than this), I'm excited for the rest of this adventure!
Evan