Floydfest, Mammoth Caves Spring Break 2019

Finally! After months and months of waiting, here is the next post of Journal Today! These past few months have been hectic and I have gone through hell and back to get to where I am today, but I have finished my second semester, officially completing my Freshman year here at Mizzou! Without further ado, I give you my spring break tale of Mammoth Caves.

Hey everyone. So here’s what’s been happening this past few weeks. Spring break was two weeks ago, and I have been a bit busy since then. Here’s how the trip went down. The leader’s of our group were named Parker Smith and Molly White. Parker has been here at Mizzou since 2014, so he was the man with the most experience of the MAB trip to Mammoth Caves National Park in Kentucky. Molly is a Junior and is on the Marching Mizzou band. The other members of our little trip were Barb Kuensting, Trevor Cleveland, and all the way from Northern Ireland Anna McCurry. On the Friday before the trip, Barb, Anna, Molly, and I crashed at Parker’s rented house. On Saturday morning we picked up Trevor at the TODD student residence complex. For the next 6 and a half hours, we listened to tunes, found ourselves the middle of nowhere in southern Indiana, almost got hit by a folded chair, tire debris, plastic bags, and a flock of wild turkeys. For some reason the turkey’s thought it would be a better idea to assault a Dodge Caravan rather than fly in the opposite direction. By the time we got to the park, everything was dark, and we were extremely exhausted. We met with the AmeriCorps group we would be working with for the rest of the week and we all drove to our cabins. Had we not known it, but to get to our cabin, we would be taking a ferry across the Green River. It was quite bizarre to park our car on a ferry that took us across a river. When we finally saw our cabin, we were relieved. It wasn’t one of those bunkhouses, but just a regular old cabin with a kitchen, two bathrooms and three rooms with bunks. We spent the rest of the night playing Clue before finally going to bed.

The next few days were filled with an absorbent amount of events which included but were not limited to, going on multiple hikes, seeing a bald eagle nest with newly born chicks, taking concrete out of the main cave, trail restoration, and cooking our own meals in the company of some field mice scattering around our cabin in which we stayed at. On the first day of the day we started work we met up with the AmeriCorps group once again in a meeting hall and we discussed what we were going to do the following days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our park supervisor for the trip was a man named Brice and he was going to have our group remove invasive garlic mustard and trees of heaven or as the locals call it, trees of hell. Brice was currently out of town for two days at a career day at a local high school, so we joined up with AmeriCorps and the Mammoth Cave’s newest Trail Manager, Troy.

Troy was perhaps one of the kindest gentlemen I have ever known, and he expressed a deep connection with the park and loved the help that we were giving him. For instance we had to help restore an entrance for one of the entrances to the cave that were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s that would have taken Troy a full two days to complete. With six kids from Mizzou and 15 kids from AmeriCorps, we finished restoring the path to the entrance in an hour and a half. Troy was so impressed he rewarded us with a box of freshly baked and glazed Krispy Kreme Donuts. After that, we had the rest of the day to explore the main entrance to the cave system at historic entrance and take out pieces of industrial concrete which were left in the 50’s by previous explorers of the cave. Once we were out of the cave, Troy took us to see Floyd Collins’s grave and Crystal Caves. Floyd Collins was a famous caver for discovering a large extent of Mammoth Caves miles, but he is also famous for his death in 1925. Collins’s death was caused by a cave falling in on him and the rescue attempt that was made to save him. His story was the third largest story of the first half of the 20th Century right behind, the kidnapping of the Lindenberg baby and the explosion of the Hindenburg. At night the stars were out so naturally we all gazed up at the multi-clusters of stars in our galaxy. Barb, thought it would be fun to figure out our astronomical signs, so we did a fun activity trying to figure out what the ups and downs of our astrological signs are.

The next day, we went to work on some of the main hiking trails and began spreading a new layer of grounded gravel on the trail. It took us all day to work on more than a mile and a half of trail, but it was totally worth it. I am happy to say that those renovated trails will be there and used by many people until another restoration project in five years. We also learned how Troy got his job. Troy was a veteran of Operation Desert Shield in the Persian Gulf War and he and his division were assigned to trick Saddam Hussein’s forces by driving through Iraq to make it look like the U.N. forces were invading. After the Gulf War, Troy retired and lived his life for some years. He still has PTSD when it comes to fireworks or cannons since they remind him of all the mortar fire he took back in the war, but over time, he has come over it. A few years later, his son was tragically killed which resulted in Troy to seek peace with himself by hiking the trails at Mammoth Caves National Park. He found his peace and came to love hiking the trails for the park, so he got the job as the trail manager for the park.

On Thursday, Brice was finally back from his job fair at the local high school so he took us on a hiking trip to see an eagle’s nest with chicks. To get there, we had to hike in the woods where there were no trails and only small traces of houses which used to be in the area before the U.S. government called for imminent domain of the properties within the boundary lines of the newly created park. As we continued to hike, we crossed bogs, traversed our way down rocky hills and took a rest at a natural spring which had clean water which was filtered by rocks and moss which had never had contact with any humans before. It was a nice piece of nature and I thoroughly enjoyed drinking the fresh water. Finally, we saw the nest and the mother eagle. It is always a treasure to see some of the nation’s most precious raptors and it was especially cool to hear the mother call out at us to keep our distance, which we respectfully did.

On Friday our final day of work, we took one more hike through the cave system and we encountered many blind crickets and spiders. We did come across one bat in the cave which was cool. There are many cool parts of Mammoth Cave, but the coolest portion of the cave for me was Grand Central Station, a portion of the Mammoth Cave System which expands for more than ten miles in this big tunnel the size of a subway station. Later that night, we played a few games of What Do You Meme? and Anna kept beating us every which way. Being frustrated with Anna’s tyranny as the meme queen, we played one more game of Clue, which I won as Mrs. White. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I am a boss when it comes to Clue. Finally, we spent our last waking hours outside cooking hot dogs and s'mores over the fire, both of which were delicious. Mammoth Cave was definitely a treasure to enjoy and to get a break away from school and coursework. The following months have been challenging, but with summer on the way, it will be another great chapter for me.

Here's the story of Floyd Collins if you want to hear it. It's really fun to listen to.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5PzraZ174V2qwLZrFFUZaz?si=6KtINuzBQoKCX0eW7kfV9g