August 31-September 1, 2024
I didn’t even know about the Lost River Cave until we passed a billboard advertising its presence on highway 70 on our way to the AirBnB in Kentucky.
When I tried to make a reservation for Rail Explorers just outside of Lexington, it was immediately clear that I should have done so while we were still in Maine. The weekends that we were in Kentucky, including Labor Day, were completely booked, except for one slot at 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Being in the upper 80s, low 90s at that time, this was not something we wanted to pursue, so we pivoted and decided to book a tour at Lost River Cave.
History
Lost River, or the portion commonly referred to as “Lost River Cave”, is a 400 foot long section of a 7 mile long cave system with a natural entrance large enough to boat through.
The area was inhabited at least 10,000 years ago by Paleo-Indians at the end of the last ice age. Once the area was settled, the site was used as a mill site thanks to its proximity to the Louisville-Nashville Turnpike, then was occupied by Confederate and Union soldiers at different times during the Civil War.
In 1934, local businessman Jimmy Stewart (NOT the actor) opened a nightclub at the mouth of the cave, complete with a stage and a bar. It was unique for its time as the cave kept the temperature well-regulated in the summer when air conditioning wasn’t common.
By the 1960s, FM radios helped usher the decline of nightclubs, and with the increased usage of air conditioners, the use of the location as a club declined and closed for good in 1962. With the arrival of interstate 65, thus making the Louisville-Nashville Turnpike obsolete, the site was abandoned, forgotten and fell into neglect, becoming a common dumping site in the 1980s.
In 1990, Friends of Lost River, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, was founded and, along with Western Kentucky University, took ownership of the cave. By 1997, they had undone much of the damage done by the dumping and opened to the public for tours.
The Tour
The tour is advertised as a 45 minute tour that starts with a 20 minute walk to the mouth of a cave followed by a 25 minute boat ride into the cave. The rest of the grounds are open to the public, free of admission, with about 2 miles of nature hiking trails.
Adult admission to the tour is $24 per person. I found that they had plenty of availability on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend so I booked us on the first tour of the morning at 9:00 am.
But first…
A Quick Trip to Nashville
I didn’t realize that we were so close to Nashville until Brandy, in her ever hungry search for a new car, discovered that there was a Ford Transit in Nashville just aching to be test driven. The Transit is on the short list of potential replacements for my Equinox at home, which I wouldn’t even trust for a trip to Des Moines, much less a cross-country trip like we are on now. Plus, something keeps draining the battery and, unless it gets started and driven, like, daily, the battery craps out.
We’ve had Sue go and drive it around the block for us while we’re away from home and it eventually got to the point where her weekly visits aren’t enough and the battery died on her.
Anyway, our discussions led us to looking at minivans to use for shorter, up to maybe month-long trips, where we would use the truck for longer trips, or for trips where 4WD would be necessary (see: Colorado in the winter.) We landed on the Transit as that’s the aesthetic she was after. I wasn’t particularly fond of the look of them, but was agreeable either way. She found one available for test driving in Nashville, Tennessee which turns out is only an hour and some change away from the AirBnB where we were staying in Kentucky. We made an appointment to test drive it Saturday morning at 10:00.
That morning, we headed out, arriving at the Carmax near Nashville at about 9:45. We were asked to take a seat, someone would be with us soon. In the meantime, we found the van in the lot and hopped in for a test fit.
The driver’s compartment was pretty cramped. It had tremendous headroom, but the width of the footwell left a lot to be desired. Eh, I figured, let’s wait and see how it drives.
We waited in the lobby until nearly 10:30 before we were finally greeted by a salesperson. A total college bro named Reese. After the requisite paperwork, he pulled the van around and Brandy and I hopped in for a quick drive up the nearby highway.
The van had a little 4 cylinder engine in it and, while zippy enough while empty, we both doubted its abilities once loaded down with a month’s worth of our traveling stuff. Plus, freeway merging was gutless and it indeed was uncomfortable to drive in and I foresaw a huge problem if we were driving that van as long as we do now.
We thanked Reese and headed further into Nashville for some real Nashville barbecue. I did a quick search for the best Nashville barbecue joint and the overwhelming winner was Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint.
Martin’s has nine locations, 6 of which are in Tennessee and half of THOSE are in Nashville-proper. We opted for the Belmont location as it avoided heading deep into downtown Nashville which would almost guarantee a nightmare of people and traffic.
We got to the eatery at about 11:30. Decorated as a typical barbecue joint typically would be, with kitschy signs and pictures, license plates and the like plastering the walls. We walked up to the counter to order, settling on the Big Brother Sampler, with 4 spare ribs, 6 ounces of brisket, and two sides. We selected the macaroni and cheese, baked beans and got extra sides of green beans and hush puppies.
We seated ourselves and our food was brought out soon after.
The ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender and super moist and flavorful. The brisket was just as delicious and the sides were all pretty good, the beans being the absolute show-stopper.
The sauce provided at each table seemed to be a mix of the thick, dark Kansas City style and the thinner, lighter, vinegar-based Carolina style. It was thinner than the KC style, darker and not as vinegary as the Carolina style.
It was good, though Brandy mentioned that it may have been a bit too vinegary for her taste. I liked it though, it had a nice complexity to it and it was different.
After that, we headed to the nearby Tanger Outlet Mall where I walked away with, among other things, a new Zwilling knife and my first ever pair of Crocs.
The knife is a 7 inch Zwilling Pro rocking santoku knife. This is the first time I was ever allowed to try a knife out in a store. They had some produce laid on on a cutting board. My salesman handed me the knife and lot me go to town on the celery that was on the board. I was given the four star model of the same knife but the bolster, as was so kindly pointed out to me by the salesman, is much more ergonomic on the Pro edition one so that’s the one I went with.
The Crocks are black.
After wandering around for a bit longer, we decided to head out. We were both pretty wiped out from the day and were ready to head back.
On the way back to the AirBnB, we stopped at a Buc-ee’s we’d spotted on the way out of town, in Smith’s Grove, KY. The array of gas pumps was enormous and the store itself was absolutely massive. It was no wonder the parking lot was as packed as it was.
We found a relatively close spot near one of the entrances and made our way into the building and were immediately hit with a cacophony of noise. It was a total madhouse and we almost had to yell to be heard over the ruckus.
We tried to do a little shopping but the massive crowd got to us and we aborted prematurely, checking out with the few things we had. During the transaction, we spoke with the guy checking us out and he told us that the store had only been open for less than 3 months, and the day before we were there, they’d done over $900,000 in sales… NOT COUNTING GAS! I was aghast.
We finished paying for our stuff and we left, Brandy suddenly nauseous from the overwhelming anxiety she experienced by being in that madhouse.
We were shortly back at the AirBnB where she quickly found herself in bed recovering from the spell.
To Lost River Cave
The next morning, we were up and out of the house at 7:20. Our first stop was back at Buc-ee’s where it was much quieter and much easier to shop. I came out of this trip with a t-shirt and a nice, heavy canvas apron to cook in, as I can’t seem to cook anything without splattering grease or oil all over me, ruining all my shirts.
We continued on down the interstate and when we exited, we remarked on how surprisingly urban the setting was. Not to say that we were in the inner city or in an area filled with blight, it’s just that the cave is tucked in between a gas station, a bank and a doctor’s office, and across the street from Slim Chickens and an Asian restaurant. Certainly not a lot in the way of nature to be seen, until you pull up to the Lost River Cave gift shop.
Once in the lot, I ran around and snapped a few pics before the doors opened at 8:30. As we waited to go inside, Brandy pointed out a couple of pumpkins growing on a vine right outside the front door, thus harkening in the autumn season. We went in, checked in and did a little shopping before our scheduled tour time of 9:00. We made our purchase and headed out, stopping at the truck on the way to drop off our merchandise, then headed down a short path and over a bridge where we waited for our tour guide.
The Walking Tour
At 9:00, a slender young woman appeared and gave us a quick spiel about the tour we were about to embark on. She opened the chain and we all stepped through. We headed down a hill to a set of stairs that led down to the eponymous river and a blue hole that feeds the river.
The walk to the blue hole was a wide, paved path that was lined on either side by tall trees just starting to show those fall colors as portended by the pumpkins up front. Reds and yellows and golds peeked their way through the green leaves that struggle to stave off the coming season.
We were told a little more about this blue hole and the legends surrounding it then we were led down the riverbank to the very wide mouth of the cave. We were told about the history of the cave, how it was used as a nightclub in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, then was treated as an illegal landfill through the 80s, then the conservation efforts that have taken place since. The nightclub is still functional as an event venue and is rented out for weddings and the like. After that portion of the speech, we waited as our walking guide took half of our group down to the boats. Shortly after, a second guide came and took the rest of us on a second boat. We headed down the ramp and started climbing in to the low, flat vessel. Once we’d loaded up, our guide ran down the center of the boat to the captain’s seat and we were on our way.
The Boat Ride
Immediately, we were instructed to duck way down to get under the low ceiling of the cave. Being as tall as I am, I elected to kneel on the floor of the boat and lay my upper body over the raised center of the seating area. We scooted under the limestone roof and we were encouraged to reach up and touch it as this was the only portion of the cave we were allowed to touch.
Once the ceiling opened up above us, we were able to sit upright and the tour continued on.
We were given the geological specifics on how the cave was formed and how it continues to grow and change through the centuries and millennia. Tiny stalactites scattered over the roof of the cave were pointed out and it was explained that they don’t get very big because floods will fill the cave with water and those waters will strip away any new progress those conical formations made over the years.
We continued on with Bennett, our guide, pointing out different formations and how they are formed, but, as with my dive into Carlsbad Caverns, I didn’t retain a lot of that information.
We finally came to the end of the river where previous generations had placed a dam to be able to control the water level in the cave and to be able to continue offering the tours (outside of the flood seasons, of course). We spun around and started heading back to the dock, ducking once more under the low ceiling just inside the mouth of the cave. We carefully disembarked, then I headed up to the nightclub to take a few pictures. We made the climb back up the hill, past the blue hole, across the bridge and to the truck where we climbed in, cranked the AC and started heading back to the AirBnB.
Post-Tour Shenanigans
After our tour, we found a nearby Goodwill where Brandy spent about an hour shopping for clothes and “a weird thing from Kentucky” (that “weird” thing being a little Hobby Lobby-style plaque that reads “let’s stay home”). As we were checking out, we heard a thunderous din to which I turned and looked out the front door of the shop to see an absolute downpouring of rain. Sporting no protection, it was going to be a damp approach to the truck. I took the bounty, left Brandy under the portico and drove the truck up almost through the front door of the building to allow her to climb aboard with minimal soakage.
From Goodwill, we headed to a nearby Ollie’s, the first of which we’d seen on our day trip across Lake Champlain to New York. There we bought, first and foremost, an umbrella, then spent another half hour shopping around, picking up, among other things, a new heating pad for Brandy- hers had finally crapped out and was tossed.
As we finished up and headed out the door, new umbrella at the ready, the rain subsided and made the umbrella largely unnecessary.
Ah well, at least we have it now, just in case.
We headed back to the AirBnB where Ash was waiting for us and the rest of the day was spent day drinking.
Conclusion
Overall, it was a pretty amazing couple of days. The Nashville barbecue was delicious, the Lost River Cave tour was great, the rain we got in the afternoon was sublime, the shopping we did was a good time, and the day drinking we did when we got back was just *chef’s kiss*.
I did take plenty of pictures on the boat tour, those and the couple of pics from Nashville are, as always, found on my Photo Diary.
Stay tuned for my next post about a wonderful early fall hike Ash and I took on Labor Day!
Be right back!
-Phil