Once we decided to travel the country, we figured we would need a good travel guide to give us ideas of where to go. We purchased our Rand McNally “Best of the Road 2017 Atlas & Guide” in October 2016. We flipped through it and left post-it flags on pages of areas we’d never seen and wanted to explore over the next several months, but had not formed a concrete itinerary of our drive. Despite the fact that both of us had driven along the East Coast south of Virginia before (Mike – annual summer trips to the Outer Banks, me – a 2011 long and hilarious drive with my mom to visit family in Fort Lauderdale, FL), we figured we would make the same trek in the RV. My father and step-mother visited us while we were staying at Small Country Campground in Louisa, VA and asked us where we were going next. “North Carolina,” was the easy answer and he countered, “But you’ve already been that way, why not head west?” This inspired me to take a look through our Atlas, which we hadn’t look at since we’d started full-timing. When I opened it and looked at what was west of us, I thought, “Mammoth Caves, I’ve never seen that – we’ve never even been to Kentucky,” so after our fateful trip through West Virginia, we bounded towards Kentucky.
Mike found us a great campground in Cave City, KY which was only 20 minutes from Mammoth Caves National Park (more about the campground in a later blog entry). Our first day at the Park we had gotten there in the afternoon, so we determined which tours to join on the following day. There are lots of helpful park rangers around, one of them helped us figure out which tours explored which parts of the caves; the ranger then assisted us with enrolling in the Domes & Dripstones Tour in the morning and the Historic Tour in the afternoon. We were interested Violet Lantern tour where you walk the caves in complete darkness guided only by lantern light, (perfectly eerie treat for Halloween, which was a few days away) but the ranger explained that particular tour is only offered in the summer months. We were advised to sign up for tours at least 24 hours in advance, since they fill up quickly even during the fall.
Afterwards we proceeded to tour the museum part of the Visitor Center. The exhibits lead you from the prehistoric geological foundations of the caves up to the modern era and the establishment of the national park. The exhibits are interactive, detailed, and engaging – we forgot to take any pictures of the inside of the museum part of the Visitor’s Center because we were engrossed in the information. The final exhibit included a short video about the caves narrated by Mike Rowe; at the end he stated there are 390 miles of discovered caves, however next the screen was a monitor that read “As of October 2017, there are 412 miles of caves in the park” meaning there could be hundreds of miles of unexplored caves to be discovered in the future. Another important aspect of the museum focused on bats, particularly the white-nose syndrome that is decimating their population. The park is making great efforts to help maintain their ecosystem and prevent harm from human contact – I’m a big fan of bats and all they do, but I found it easy to follow their policy of not touching a bat if you see on in the caves (I didn’t see one during either of our tours).
The next morning, we got over to the Mammoth Caves Visitor Center for our Domes & Dripstones tour. Our tour included a school group of about 30-40 high schoolers, so we ended up on three buses to be driven to one of the cave entrances. The Domes & Dripstones tour involves walking through incredibly narrow passageways and down 280 steep steps, which meant we had to travel single file. As I mentioned in our Bridge Day entry, I have a slight fear of heights, and I’m claustrophobic, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from exploring the caves. While I focused on not tripping and falling to my death, Mike took awesome photos as we trekked down the steps.
Upon reaching the bottom, our enthralling ranger guide (a retired teacher, who loves his job at the park!) told us about the geological history of the caves. With so many students on our tour, he couldn’t help but get into “classroom mode” while guiding us through the caves. Since the caves are “dry caves” unlike the “Wet caves” of Luray or Skyline caverns in Virginia, there no dripping water in the caves, at least not in the ones on the daily tours; the Wild Cave Tour is fully immersive involving free-climbing, lengthy crawls, tight openings, and wet areas – a little to advanced for me. The Domes and Dripstones tour ends at Frozen Niagara, a massive formation of solid water. Mercifully the tour ends with you ascending a ramp out to the exit – it’s inconceivable to image climbing UP those narrow stairs!
Our afternoon Historic Tour started at the main entrance to the caves, reminiscent of an amusement park fun house entrance with the large staircase and low lighting. Our second tour guide was younger and less animated, but still thorough in his presentation about the history of the caves. He spoke about Native Americans use of the caves, their discovery by explorers, and their importance during the War of 1812 for the mining of salt peter. Due to the expanse of the caves, private land owners offered paid tours to visitors from various entrances. Ardent explorers mapped the caves, and sadly some perished for their efforts. It’s not surprising how easy it is to get lost in these caves, the rangers emphasized the importance of staying with the group lest you lose your way (of course a second ranger brought up the rear of the group, so you couldn’t really get lost without major effort). The establishment of the Mammoth Caves National Park permitted regulation of tourism in the parks controlling the environmental impact of crowd, which allows the caves to remain intact for future generations.
We spent the next few days hiking around the park. We trekked trails overlooking the Green River. The best trail was recommended to us by our cashier at Big Mike’s Rock Shop on the road to the park – Cedar Sink trail. It’s off the beaten path and runs around a huge sinkhole, which is a depression in the ground caused by a collapse of the surface layer. This sinkhole is a “karst topography, which means the region is influenced by the dissolution of soluble rocks” (Wikipedia). It was impressive.
The sink hole area was littered with small cave entrances too small for humans, but probably make lovely homes for chipmunks, squirrels, and birds – bears are rare in the park. We even rode on the ferry that runs across the Green River, the water level was quite low, so it was a short ferry ride across.
It was a truly immersive experience. Over ten years ago, I got to see the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and I definitely wanted that experience to be enthralling and spiritual, but it was marred by the deafening din from the massive discourteous crowd and the blatant disregard for the prohibition of flash photography. Luckily the National Park service at the caves keeps tour group sizes manageable, strictly enforces their prohibition on flash photography, and encourages an immersive experience. On the Historic Tour, our ranger shut off all the lights in our section of the cave and lit a single lantern - a frightening and mind-blowing experience.
Mike took a good many pictures not a ton, but commented that he wanted to enjoy the majesty of the caves with his own eyes. He’s quite right, it was definitely a worthwhile experience I’m glad we got to see it.
