Mammoth Cave Domes and Dripstones Tour Part 2 - Dripstones

Continuing with our Mammoth Cave National Park tour where the previous post left off…

About halfway through the tour, we came to a large area with benches. There, we sat to rest for a few moments while the ranger guide told about some of the history of the cave. This was also the portion of the tour where all of the lights were turned off to demonstrate total darkness. I did not bother taking a photo of that, however. And the glow-in-the-dark shirt of the guy in front of me kind of ruined the darkness a little. After that, we moved on to the dripstones portion of the tour, and these photos will move on to that as well.

Also, why doesn’t that guy have on a hat? Hasn’t he seen our Wear a Hat page? I am guessing he was not wearing a hat because he was inside the cave, a few hundred feet below the surface.

Dripstones are formed when water slowly drips, leaving limestone deposits that create all sorts of interesting formations. They probably do not look nearly as impressive in photos as they do in person, however. You can see a couple of people at the bottom of this photo to help illustrate the size of these formations.

To me, the formations in this photo look almost like pieces of fabric blowing in the wind, although they are definitely stone pieces that do not move at all.

I don’t even know what this formation looks like. But it was right there close to us, and it allowed for some good depth of field in the photo. Plus, the dramatic lighting shows off the different shapes present here.

Some of the Mammoth Cave dripstone formations were quite large, and they were all formed one drip at a time. Imagine if your dripping sink faucet could do something like that!

More of the same, and yet everything was different at every turn. Can you imagine being one of the first people to find this? Of course, it would not have all of the lighting to help you see it. Or a ranger guide to help you get back out.¹

This formation is known as Frozen Niagara, because it looks like a waterfall that has been frozen in ice. But once again, instead of being a waterfall, this was formed one drip at a time.

The ranger guide said that one of the reasons that there are not dripstones in more of Mammoth Cave is because much of the cave has a large rock area that acts as a ceiling for much of the cave. This rock area also prevents water from seeping through. It is pretty easy to see here where that rock area ends.

Believe it or not, I took several more photos of the different formations that I have not shared here.²

This is actually a continuation of the formation in the previous photo. I thought it was interesting that it dripped down to a point above the opening below. Of course, all of these formations are still slowly forming over time with a few new drips every day.

For some of the formations, the lighting was a bit harsh, at least for photographic purposes. So I decided to convert this one to black and white, which turned out well. And yes, those are people walking along the path in the background, if that helps give a sense of scale.

And because the previous photo worked so well in black and white, here is one more. Such interesting textures.

And almost too soon, our Mammoth Cave tour ended and we were back on the bus to the Visitors Center.³

Personally, I enjoyed this tour even more than the Historic Tour, so I was glad that we had done this one after the other one. Both were good, however. I just felt like the sights along this tour were a little more interesting, and I believe the rest of our group agreed.

Perhaps one of these days we will get back to Mammoth Cave National Park for another tour. There are several other tours that we have not yet experienced, after all.

No Fear

As I mentioned above, on every cave tour that I have ever taken, at some point once you are deep inside the cave the lights are turned off to show you total darkness. And that scares some people. Then, once the lights are turned back on, fears seem to go away, for the most part.

Most everyone has fears, although some people hide their fears better than others do. Maybe a fear of those people is that others will find out their fears. Either way, we all have them.

Perhaps loving others might cause some fear. You might be afraid of what will happen, or that you might be rejected, or that you might be asked to do more than you want, or that others will think less of you for some reason.

We should put aside our fears, our preconceptions, our thoughts about what others might think, and love one another. And once we get in the habit of loving others, those fears will start to go away, too.

There should be no fear in loving others.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. - 1 John 4:18

About the Photos

As with the photos in the previous post, I used a 35mm prime lens and a high ISO setting.

As I mentioned above for the last two photos, I could not get the color of the light to look right no matter how much I tried. So black and white worked, and then I resisted the temptation to go back and convert all of the others to black and white as well. However, some of the future photos that I post from this tour might not be so lucky as to stay in color.

Photo: Each photo is a single Raw exposure, processed in Raw Therapee and GIMP.
Camera: Sony Alpha A7 II
Lens: Rokinon 35mm f/1.8
Date: July 7, 2024
Location: Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky