Getting the flavor of...

last updated 8 January 2015

Kentucky’s underground zip line

I’m standing 100 feet beneath Louisville, preparing to jump off a 70-foot cliff into “a pit of darkness,” said Wendy Pramik in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The Louisville Mega Cavern, a 100-acre former limestone mine located underneath the Louisville Zoo, is home to the world’s only underground zip-line course and has become the city’s most popular attraction since its 2011 opening. Sharing the cavern are a tram tour, a ropes course, and—starting each November—a “Lights Under Louisville” holiday display. The cavern even has Wi-Fi. As others in my group take the leap and disappear into darkness, I shiver slightly, and I’m not sure whether to blame fear or the cave’s constant 56-degree temperature. When it’s finally my turn, I inhale—and jump. Sailing through the shadowy cavern in a harness attached to the overhead wire, I exhale slowly. “This is fun, I think, and not as scary as I envisioned. The cave is wide, open, and fascinating.

Washington state’s healing sludge

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The main attraction in Soap Lake, Wash., isn’t soap—it’s mud, said Brian J. Cantwell in The Seattle Times. This once-bustling spa town appears to be struggling today: I saw plenty of “For Sale” signs as I drove toward the lake. But the mineral-rich mud that gathers on the lake’s shallow bottom is still popular with Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, who believe it cures everything from psoriasis to arthritis. At the charming Inn at Soap Lake, you can even fill your bathtub with piped-in natural mineral water. Eager to test the lake’s healing power, I waded in the next day, churned my feet, and pulled up a handful of mud that smelled like rotten eggs. (Sulfur is among the lake water’s 23 minerals.) Ignoring the odor, I covered myself with the mud and let it dry as I sat in the sun in a nearby Adirondack chair. I didn’t have any ills to cure, but when I rinsed off, “my skin was baby soft.”