Louisville Magazine

JUN 2017

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 6.17 31 THE BIT Cave City and Mammoth Cave packaged as one, downsized and wedged forever in the nearby limestone hills of Southern Indiana. That is the promise of Marengo Cave, off I-64 about 45 minutes west of Louisville, past pastures, quaint farmhouses and a graveyard. A natural wonder with the kitsch one craves from roadside attractions. When your phone loses service, you're moments away. At the cave on a cool but sunny spring day, banjo music strums from outdoor speakers at a wooden lodge that houses a gift shop heavy on insect jewelry and prairie nostalgia. Schoolchildren on a field trip squeal somewhere above or below the surface. No park rangers at privately owned Marengo Cave. Instead, our tour guide is a shy, sweet 17-year- old only two weeks into the gig, her serious hiking boots barely scuffed, a 40-minute script for the Crystal Palace tour (one of two offered walking tours) burned into memory. We enter the cave through a small metal door not much larger than a refrigerator door and descend 22 steps. Inside, the cave feels like a breeze-less San Francisco evening — chilly (a constant 52 degrees) and soggy. Parts of the cave's ceiling drizzle like a low-pressure shower. Even in a seemingly dry corner, drips echo nearby. But those drips decorate the place, minerals deposited by the water creating formations like cones or canine teeth. Our guide starts with a tutorial. Stalactites, she says, "hold tight to the ceiling." Stalagmites, she continues, "Well, they might reach the ceiling or you might trip over them." And finally, columns — where stalactites connect to stalagmites. "That's just what we call 'em," she says. A BIT TO DO Photos by Mickie Winters

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