Mammoth Cave

We landed near Bowling Green, KY to take in the sights around Mammoth Cave National Park. The cave is reputed to be the largest in the world and we have no reason to doubt. The fee structure for visiting Mammoth Cave is different than Carlsbad Caverns. The park requires no entrance fee, but tours have fees and guided tours are the only way by which to gain access to the caves. We took in two tours during our stay (not on the same day!).

The first tour was labeled the Historic Tour and took about 2 hours to cover the 2 miles in and out. Unlike Carlsbad Caverns, there's no elevators to help you out of this cave. The routes do not change elevation so drastically either, so they are actually much more friendly to those averse to a continuous stair-master exercise to exit!

Here's a couple of photos that we copied from the internet:

While the formations are terrific, there are not as many of them as you might imagine. The cave is 'dry' for the most part, so formations are only in limited areas. We enjoyed the temperature inside the cave (54 F) as a break from the 85-90 F temperatures outside in very high humidity!

While we had a good time, we did not enjoy touring with the large crowd. Some of the tours allow as many as 120 people at once to accompany the ranger through. There are only a few stops along the way with discussion from the ranger, so most of the way is filing through in single file and browsing as you go.

There were several places where the passageway was very narrow - the one below was titles 'Fat Man's Misery'. We didn't think it was a tough as several places where the height of the opening required stooping as while walking.

We took another tour in an evening. Some of the path was the same as our daytime tour, but we liked it better for several reasons:

1. The group was smaller - the size was limited to no more than 40 people and we toured with about 20.
2. The atmosphere was very different - no artificial lighting! Lanterns were provided to every 4 people to share and the interior of the cave was completely different. The limited lighting heightened our sense of hearing and smell!
3. The tour was more of a historical presentation than geological. With the fresh dose of the Creation Museum, listening to the millions and millions of years talk gets really tiresome to us. Presentations of factual information regarding the cave's discovery and visitors since were very interesting!

The rangers conduct frequent programs that are educational in nature. We attended an evening session with a discussion of bees and beekeeping that was very enlightening and enjoyable.

The park itself is very pretty with heavy forests and surface trails. We're planning to enjoy at least one surface hike which will require no guide. Private concessionaires provide rental canoes or horses for alternative touring, but we didn't choose those.

Next stop, the Smoky Mountains!