HappyanniversaryhappyanniversaryhappyanniversaryHAAAAPPYanniversary!!

Gasp! It's an update that doesn't contain a quiz result!

So...Kentucky. Land of trees, hills, more trees, more hills, a big enormous cave in the middle of a huge park that contains trees, hills, more trees, more hills, the aforementioned big enormous cave, some deer, a few wild turkeys and apparently copperheads, althogh we didn't see any of those.

Steven and I decided, well it's our 2-year anniversary. We've done Vegas two years in a row, and while we love Vegas and it's a great place and all, we're going back there in December for Johnny's birthday, and besides which we always come back home a little more tired than we left. It's a marvellous place but really exhausting from the heat. I don't care if it's a hundred degree dry heat forecast...100 degrees is 100 degrees, and that's HOT. The food's great though. I was doing quite well, size 10, sometimes a size 8 if it was cut right, before the wedding, and then we went to Vegas and ate at the Grand Lux Cafe in the Venetian approximately 10 meals a day, and whammo, I was back up to a size 12. Then I rediscovered how to bake things and had my own oven to bake it in, and that was that. So, yes, Vegas is wonderful, and I'm still a 12. But I'm working on that. Tae Kwon Do and running around a huge enormous cave for three days helps.

I didn't actually mention what cave we saw, did I. Mammoth Cave, so named because Really Big Enormous Cave is too descriptive and takes away all the mystique.

Mammoth Cave is located in the middle of the Mammoth Cave National Park, and there's about 365 miles of cave, of which we saw about 10. We did three tours, one of which was by lantern light only, and it was very cool. Literally. 54 degrees every day, no matter what. We'd come out of that cave into 110% humidity and 98 degree weather--Celsius--and just want to jump right back into that cave. Down 200 feet into the Pit of Death and Slowly Dripping Water.

Most of you know that I don't really like heights, and I don't really like enclosed spaces, and I really don't like dark enclosed spaces, so you're probably wondering what in the hell were the two of us doing mucking around a cave on our 2-year wedding anniversary. The answer is: getting away from computers and the people who use them.

Also, it's a testament to our lack of ability to plan anything more than 2 weeks in advance. After ACen, we realized holy crap, our anniversary is in like a month. And then we had stuff to do and stuff to do and then we realized holy crap, our anniversary is in like 2 weeks. We figured out like on June 19th that a) no, we were not going to fly anywhere and b) there isn't much to do in the greater Midwest, unless you find soybeans *really* entertaining. I mean, Indiana is just flat out. Absolutely nothing to do in Indiana except sit and watch the lake effect snow pile up. Even in June--lake effect snow. The lake just sort of looms there, watching hapless Indiananananananans (didn't know when to stop), daring them "go on, put on that bikini, that speedo, yes go on, do it" and then WHAMMO with the Lake Effect Snow of Frozen Death.

So, nothing in Indiana. Nothing much in the rest of the midwest, either, unless you want to spend $250 a nite on a hotel in Chicago, which is fine and all, but we live an hour away and it's just plain silly to spend that kind of money when we could just drive in for the day. There's the Dells, but that's more of a get-your-college-buds-together-and-about-20-kegs-of-beer-and-go-eat-cheese kind of trip. Steven had talked about his family at one point going to Mammoth Cave, and my mom had gone there too, and we threw the idea out there, and that's what stuck. We rented a car and ended up with a brand new PT Cruiser which was a very spiffy car. We took pictures of it. It was blue and drove very well. Turns out Mammoth Cave is a very nice road trip that isn't strenuous and is in just the right place if you want to get away from what's bugging you. Like people and their computers.

I only had one phone call from work asking why, when they saved .tifs scanned from the copier as .jpgs, it only kept the first page. I had figured, well, my cell phone is Danny's Ohnoma of the phone world, so there's no WAY I'd get reception in the middle of Cave City, KY, where there are far more cows and horses than people. Steven's cell is the one that actually gets coverage here in the burbs, because Cingular is slightly less evil than Verizon, which I rate right up there with Carmax in terms of honesty, reliability, and customer service.

So anyway, one tech support call, which really startled me. We're at this shop on top of a hill, surrounded by beautiful country full of trees, hills, go-kart tracks, mini-golf, and the occasional cow or horse, and I hear this faint DOO doo doo doo doo DOO doo doo, DOO doo doo doo doo DOO, doo doo coming from the direction of my purse and I probably had this mystified expression on my face like "hark, a sound I've never heard before!" Followed by a sort of "bwa?!" expression that expressed my shock at actually having more than 1/4 of a bar of cell coverage and my further amazement at the fact that someone would have reason to call me when I made it PERFECTLY CLEAR that we were going on vacation. "OH, you're on vacation?! I'm so SORRY!!" Yeah, right you are. I almost told them to take their .tifs and shove them someplace unpleasant but restrained myself. Barely.

Anyway, we did 3 cave tours, which all were splendid--the guides were all really knowledgable and had obvious respect for the delicate ecology we were stepping into when they weren't trying to scare the hell outta us. The lantern tour had this young guy for the guide, and he had the perfect ghost story telling voice. He had this softspoken drawl that drew you in as he was telling us about people who died in the tuberculosis huts because some 19th century quack thought the cool, clammy, humid air down there mixed with the soot and ashes of the fires they kept going so they could see was just PERFECT for people who had a deadly lung ailment. Which proves that the more things change, the more they stay the same as far as doctors are concerned. You could practically SEE the guant, pale faces of the poor consumption victims staring at you from just beyond the reach of the lantern light as the young guide described them, and then just as you picked up your lantern to keep going the other guide, who barely said a word the whole time, was STANDING IN THAT CRACK OF CAVE LOOKING AT YOU WHERE YOU LEAST EXPECTED HIM AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! Some people really screamed. I almost did but was distracted with trying not to burn myself with the lantern. I fully expected to come out of there with third degree burns but figured having light would be worth it. When the young tour guide brought out the lanterns before the tour started, he asked for volunteers to carry them (we had 10 for a tour of about 30-40) and I didn't even wait for him to finish talking or for others to volunteer, I marched straight up to him and he passed me the one he was holding with this sort of odd look on his face. I told him yes, I was THAT much of a control freak. I didn't tell him I'm afraid of dark, cramped spaces. In fact, I didn't tell anyone on those tours, but they figured it out pretty quick anyway on their own.

The beginning of the historic tour, the first one we took, was nice because it was cool in the cave and there was a lot of space. It also had electric lighting, although not quite enough in my opinion. I tried to take pictures but ended up with a lot of pictures of cave dust 6 inches in front of the camera so we bought a book instead. Anyway, then we went down a long staircase approximately 1'3" wide down about 200 feet. Did I mention I don't like heights or cramped spaces? This was just the easy part.

Then we were duck walking through short passageways for another half hour, which was ok because I had plenty of room to hold my arms out, and as long as I didn't think about being crushed under 250 feet of rock I was mostly ok. The two guys in front of us kept saying "Fat Man's Misery...this is like Tall Man's Misery!" which made me laugh until we hit Fat Man's Misery. That's what I get, of course. I went through sideways and kept my arms out the whole time, talking to myself, "It's ok, it's ok, it's ok, I'm fine, I'm fine, just a little cramped, two more feet, keep going, I'm ok, I'm ok, I'm ok..." I'm quite certain that the people behind us were afraid they were going to be stuck behind me until we experienced the same fate as those poor consumption victims. Steven managed to get a few pictures...I look pretty wide-eyed, but I figure that's no different from some of the pictures from Vegas I've come home with.

You see, for our honeymoon, we went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Vegas, which is 1/3 the height of the real Eiffel Tower. I'm not sure if I could do the real one. I barely made it up this one. At that time, Steven hadn't had too much experience with me freaking out over things. I don't go completely uncontrollably to pieces often so I warned him in advance how to handle it. He did admirably well and we got some awesome pictures of the water show at the Bellagio from the top of the tower right at dusk. Steven took some pictures straight down the elevator shaft which, when we showed my mom, made both her and me freak out. Since then I've had this evil inclination to do something every year that I know would freak her out, since she has the same fears as I do. Sorry, Mom. ^^;;; Last year it was the Stratosphere, which is even taller than the Eiffel Tower. The planes coming in to McCarran sometimes pass right by the Stratosphere. I always make a point of calling her from atop these things too, just to prove I did it. I couldn't call her from the caves though--I figured if my cell phone won't work in my HOUSE, no way in hell was it going to work 300 feet underground. Besides which, the guides were moving at a good clip and my biggest fear was being left behind in the dark. Eep...

So we made it through most of the historic tour until we reached the 200 foot steel zigzag staircase, which was wet and slippery because that part of the cave was actually active with dripping water. Let me just take this opportunity to say that I HATE zigzag staircases, especially when the stairs are just slats and you can see everything below you. I made Steven go first, so that if I ended up grabbing the legs of the person in front of me and locking up, they'd be the legs of someone I knew. Ideally, Mom and I have always gotten each other through stuff like this, with bookend people we know to also help talk to us if we both manage to get locked up. But I made it, so all was well.

The tour the next day was the Frozen Niagara and that was like steep, wet, slippery, cave cricket-and-millipede-coated staircases for about 300 feet down, through what I'm sure was beautiful cave formations but I was too busy preoccupied with thoughts of plummeting to my death to really appreciate it. And the bugs were kinda nasty too. Then it was cave, cave, cave, cave until we reached the drapery room, which has some of the most amazing formations I've ever seen even in pictures of caves. Just sheets and sheets of stalactites, even columns. Later on there were ice white formations, which gave the tour its name. It really did look like ice. There was a steel grate to keep people from touching the rock though because one drop of human oil can stop the formation from growing completely. My pictures of the icy white parts didn't turn out well because my camera gets confoozled by things too close to it, but the guide took some pictures of us in the drapery room and that was very cool.

The third tour was the lantern tour, that was actually on our actual anniversary. But since that one was the coolest, I told you about it first. The food at the hotel was quite good, and even though we were jumping hotel rooms almost every night we were there because that's the only way we could get nonsmoking, it was remarkably stress-free. We did some very low-key stuff in Cave City, like mini-golf and looking at shops with tons of rocks and every imaginable made-in-China souvenir. I must say--going to gem shows really kills the fun of shopping for rocks anywhere else. I knew most of the rocks I saw and none were indigenous. So we really didn't get souvenirs for people cuz we couldn't find anything we liked enough to get people that was actually from Kentucky. The people were always nice, of course. It's the South, they're always nice. We went to this little steakhouse further into town for our anniversary and had some of the best steak and chicken we've ever had. Almost as good as our wedding and that's saying something. Although the waitress had a t-shirt on that said on the back "Machine Gun Shooting Range, 2004" and the name of some shooting range in Kentucky. That was a little strange.

So, in all, we had a great, mostly computer-free time, and saw some really spiffy stuff and managed to get some pictures that turned out ok. And I probably lost a half a pound just from my attacks of claustrophobia and agoraphobia in the caves so that was good too Size 10 here I come!! ^_^