Geologically Speaking

Caves and caverns and sinkholes of the South...

Being from Oregon, we knew a little bit about the 3D world below our feet. We have visited the Oregon Caves (formed by water dissolving rock),the volcanic caves in eastern Oregon, and the ocean forged Sea Lion Caves on the Oregon Coast. We even dug a well to pump water from an aquifer below our Lorane property. But really, we didn’t think much about the underworld.

Until we explored Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida…

It started innocently enough when Gary wanted to tour the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green Kentucky.

Okay. Not so exciting for me. But wait! A few years ago, there had been a sinkhole inside the museum that swallowed eight highly valuable, rare Corvettes. Now that sounds interesting!

Cars that looked like this, became lost to the world.

A few of them were retrieved, and a few of those were refurbished. This one was left “as is”.

It was interesting, and a testament to the reality that what seems solid and unmovable can quickly change. People in earthquake, hurricane, flood and fire country have lived with this uncertainty for eons. Those of us on boats have also developed an appreciation of these forces of nature.

Similar to sinkholes, caves and caverns can be formed by “dissolution” meaning that over long periods of time water can dissolve very large areas of rock underneath the ground.

Just down the road from the Corvette museum was another very large example of this geologic activity, Mammoth Caves National Park.

We were told that we “had to” visit. Sigh…. Feeling slightly claustrophobic and still wearing “the boot”, I was not so happy about going down hundreds of steps into the dank bowels of the earth, just to have to climb up hundreds of steps to breath fresh air again. But, okay. It is a World Heritage site, and the longest known cave system in the world. Probably worth a visit.

We descended….

And the scenery inside was fantastic! Lots and lots of stalactites and stalagmites.

Glad we did it. But, oh so glad to be back in the sunlight again!

A few days later, we toured the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg Tennessee.

And believe it or not, there were more caves! Apparently “it’s the water” applies to more than just Olympia Beer. The JD folks believe that the distinctive flavor of their hooch is due in large part to the minerals in the crystal clear water that flows from a limestone cave on their distillery property.

Well, there must be something to that. Their whiskey was yummy!

To put a feather in our “caving cap”, a few weeks later Bill had “a proposal” for us. How would we like to meet him and Zoe in Florida for some Scuba Diving… in caverns. Oh no. Really? Not again!

I chocked it up to the lengths we will sometimes go to when we want to hang out with our grown kids.

Feeling nervous about the whole thing, and not having dove for more than a year, I smiled (kind of) and put on my gear. We went into the cavern. It looked like this:

Very dramatic, and certainly different than any other dive we have done! We did two cavern dives and one river “drift dive” together. All of them were super fun and unique and resulted in a family of happy scuba divers!

And the best part was…. We got to spend the entire weekend together. It was wonderful!

To see our current voyage path with Gary’s photos, click on this: G&P Voyage Map