Day 3: Thursday May 15 - Day of Discovery

Up at 6:30am with the birds chirping. Picture of Emily and Pepper at their side of the cottage.

Seems like there's always a few interesting cars around. These seemed to be on a tour. Jacob said they are probably Austin Heely 3000s.

 Short morning hike to the river overlook.

Morning self guided cave discovery tour. Saw some fossils, small cave art, domes, etc.

The picture above is what the cave below may look like if it were opened to the outside.

This is the entrance to the Historic Cave. See top left of figure below. The self discovery tour started here. Emily took the Violet City tour by torch light that started in the lower right of this picture.

Emily corrected me. This is a picture of one of the bats hanging out near the front of the cave.  

Here is the cave petroglyph that looks like a tic tac toe board. I think 22 years in the cave may have the ranger seeing things.

Emily took the Violet City Lantern Cave tour in the afternoon. 

In addition to the wagons that took visitors to the caves, there was also a small railroad for a short time 

Dinner at Cracker Barrel. Arizona has its Flintstones and Bedrock, but Kentucky has its Jellystone Park and Yogi. Multiple tourist traps outside the park boundary.

There's a small two car ferry that crosses

 a river in the park, but it was damaged by the floods in the mountains. Here's a picture of it's remnants as well as a reminder that the road ends in the water, which is quite obvious unless it's dark.