natural tunnel

Well, a fairly stressful and nearly disastrous little trip over to Natural Tunnel today. I hadn't meant to go so far but I missed the road to the lake and didn't feel like turning around. The cat was not amused at an extra hour of driving, and I was a bit worried about the annoying hydralic clutch on the truck, which may be acting up again, but I got here.

Unfortunatly somewhere on that very winding road to Gate City a lot of stuff tumbled around in back. The worst of it involved a drenched pan of used kitty litter. And I'll stop there. Anyway, no harm done, and I enjoyed a bike ride and hike down to the tunnel, and got some serious exercise all the way uphill coming back.

The tunnel has a freight train line going through it, and years ago we'd hike down there and balance our way accross the trestle over the stream, then walk alongside the tracks and through the tunnel. It was magical and just a little bit scary, and when a train did go through, it was LOUD. But really it was a lot less dangerous than my exploits reading books while walking along the tracks on the way to school, and sometimes crossing a temporarily stopped train. We were aware that the tunnel could be dangerous, and we were careful.

I really see what's become of the tunnel today as symtomatic of a lot of changes in America in the past 15 years. They added a chairlift! They put in walkways at the bottom, a separate pedestrian bridge, and a viewing area. And lots of signs threatening visitors not to go out of bounds and actually enter the tunnel. All very safe, and boring, and enough to make me feel like a cow going down a ramp to slaughter.

I can't say whether I illegally tresspassed inside this great natural tunnel or not this time...