So, Almost a month break from this blog! Did you notice?

Where was I? Why Was I… Why was I so late, I mean.

It was a bit of a writer’s break. But I was also back around Mammoth Cave, visiting with people I hadn’t seen in a while, going to places I had never been before, and also learning even more about Mammoth Cave, and the Mammoth Cave area.

Which is a problem presented by almost every National Park. A good problem to have. It’s the title of this Blog post. There is always more to discover!

I try to make the books in the Junior Rangers Investigative Club series as accurate to what we know as possible. (Discounting the entire plot, the people, and anything related to the mystery.) But I walk into every book trying to learn as much as I can about every park, and find myself regretful when each book nears the end that I am unable to fill more pages with all of the thing that I have learned.

I mean, I could, technically fill every book with twice as many facts, descriptions, and interesting pieces of information. However I don’t know if that would do the pacing of the story any favors. (It wouldn’t.) Seriously, I am sitting with a near complete manuscript of the 3rd book, and if I added everything I knew about Biscayne National Park to the book I could easily double the page count.

There are several stories missing from that book which would be wonderful to tell, and these are stories I had to leave out for time, for pacing, because they didn’t fit into the story, or simply because I didn’t know them until the book was almost done.

The same can be said for the first two books in the series. Treasure off the Coast, hopefully captures the essence of the Dry Tortugas, and I hope that anyone who reads it walks away more informed. But it barely scratches the surface of the history of the park: The Story of the HMS Tyger, which shipwrecked out there, her crew fortifying Garden Key until they eventually captured Spanish vessels and sailed home. The letters written by prisoners and soldiers stationed out in Fort Jefferson, and how they felt about life out there. How the island became a yellow fever isolation ward after the US army abandoned it, and how it became a supply post for sea-planes hunting submarines in WW2.

The Specters of Mammoth Cave. Has the same wonderful complication. There are many ghost stories I didn’t get to tell, related to the park, and to other locations nearby. There are places in the park that I only brushed upon, but which are well worth visiting: In and out of the cave. There are entire sections of the cave the crew did not get to visit, (which is obvious, because the cave is 400 miles long, but also:) Some of those missing sections of Mammoth Cave (and other caves) include the best cave tours available to modern visitors. Great Onyx Cave, any trip that includes the Star Chamber, and many more. I simply couldn’t fit them all in. The same goes for areas above ground!

And that’s the wonderful and terrible thing about any national park you get the opportunity to visit. You could go one time, and see so much of the park, but however inclusive your visit is, you will have missed something. You could spend months, nay years, in and out of the parks, researching them, visiting them, studying them, talking to local experts, and still you will be surprised by how much there is left to learn.

Or, at least, I always am.

So recently, I was back in the Mammoth Cave region, and I got to do a lot of fun things, and that includes learning about, or experiencing fun things that I never have before.

To that end, I’m probably going to dedicate the next several blogs to talking about those, because as time marches on, and the seasons warm up. As school lets out and the birds begin to sing, it’s a great time to explore your National Parks, and I want to make sure anyone who reads this knows about some of the oportunites available, so the don’t miss them.

So, stay tuned, the next several blogs will highlight some of the other cool things inside and outside of Mammoth Cave National Park that you can do with your family, friends, or even on your own! There are hikes, dinosaurs, and even new Ghost Stories in the future!

For now, I’ll leave this off with pictures of some goofy animals, so I can save pictures of the places and things I am talking about for the next blog.