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This morning we went on a four hour Intro to Caving tour, walking, crawling, and occasionally scrambling through Mammoth Cave. It was fun, but not nearly as strenuous as the description had led us to believe. It was pretty leisurely, and even the harder parts were very short. I would have liked to do more climbing. We saw more cave wildlife than I've seen in the past: blinds cave beetles and lots and lots of cave crickets. But there was less cave decoration than on most tour routes I've been on, probably because we novice cavers would have damaged it accidentally, or deliberately, like one of the annoying tweens on the tour.
Afterwards, we drove back into Tennessee to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We didn't hustle enough to arrive before sunset, but that meant we had a beautiful drive along a curvy road as an enormous full moon was rising. It had just rained, and mist was rising off of the road like smoke. There were both lightning bugs nearby and flashes of actual lightning in the distance.
We set up camp with our headlamps and camp lantern, and enjoyed some hot chocolate.
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