Down the Rabbit Hole

Oops. I didn't realize it has been a month since my last post. Again, my tens of readers must be so upset - I apologize. Honestly? I haven't been doing any caching. How sad is that? I COULD tell you I've been lazy, but that just isn't true. I've had many other things to do lately, and guess what? Since this isn't a blog about my personal life I ain't gonna tell you about them.
I did do some caching toward the end of May in Kentucky and Tennessee. Mark and I went to the NACS conference in Nashville for work, and had the opportunity to stay at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. WOW. What a place. I sort of thought if we had spare time outside of the conference we could drive around and do some caching, but truth be told - you'd be crazy to leave that hotel if you're only there for a couple of days.
On the way to Nashville we stopped at Mammoth Cave in KY. We took a pretty cool tour. You enter the caves through a door, and decend steep stairs down in to the cave. Sometimes the walls are so close you have to turn sideways. I took a lot of pictures in the cave, and no matter how I played with my settings, the pictures just didn't come out. Oh, well. I guess you'll have to see that for yourselves.
I've included pictures here of the hotel, along with a few caches we found (and didn't find) on the way home.

I'll start with the caches. This wasn't far from the hotel at all - right on the other side of the freeway. Its a Bob Evans - I hate these caches. There are way too many muggles. And these coordinates were off, besides.  

Finally. Signing the logbook that was inside the magnetic keyholder under the newspaper stand. (Hmm... sounds a little "Col. Mustard in the Dining Room with the Candlestick) 

Searching in vain for a cache that wasn't there. I checked later - it has been completely removed from the geocaching site, which is unusual - if something goes missing they post it that way. They don't just wipe it from existence. But at least I know it wasn't just us. 

What was this guy doing? I was convinced that he was waiting for us to leave the area so he could get the cache himself, but it turned out he was just eating his lunch. Or.. so it seemed. 

Back in the Mammoth Cave area of KY on the way home, we picked up this cache in a convenient cemetery right off the freeway. 

Mark found the cache under this tree. 

The Hercules Train cache. This train used to cart passengers to the entrance to the caves at the turn of the century (or something). We were supposed to get information in order to claim the cache, but it is under construction and all the signs had been taken down. Figures. 

Entering Mammoth Cave. 

And out of the cave. We were in there. And there was this big underground hole. I swear.  

Hotel hallway. Does it remind anyone else of The Shining? But.. somehow ALL hotels remind me of The Shining. 

Mark's got upgraded to an Atrium view room with a balcony. My room had a view of a pine tree and a parking lot. 

Fountains and pools right outside the balcony of Mark's room. 

Wasabi's - the cool sushi bar. We didn't eat right at the bar, but they had some damn fine sushi. We had it for lunch one day, but then it was also included in the breakfast buffet. Yeah, I had sushi for breakfast.  

Up close this waterfall seemed very Indiana Jones. 

Lovely orchids, growing everywhere. The restaurants even serve them on top of the food.  

Entrance in to the oldest part of the hotel - The Magnolia. This is where our conference was held.  

A random waterfall (one of many) in a section called The Conservatory. Walkways stretched above this area, but you could also walk on paths below that wind through the water and tropical fauna.  

You can take a freakin' boat ride around this section of the hotel, called The Delta. 

Naturally, this lovely rotating bar was a favorite spot of mine. Again, this is the view from Mark's balcony.