Mammoth Cave National Park

Visited: July 2020

Accommodations: Staying with family in Ohio

Duration: 5 hours

Our trip to Mammoth Cave was a Covid trip, we did this park in the summer while visiting my brother’s family in Cincinnati. Not everything was open on our trip but we were lucky that some things were. Some parks had shut down completely and weren’t even open during this time. The Visitor Center was open and you could do the Historic Tour and………. that was about it. Historic tour was a do it yourself walk with Rangers in the middle and at the end answering questions. We also had to purchase tickets in advance, not sure if you need to still do this or not now.

We began our visit to the park in the visitor center getting all of our goodies we get at every park. We then exited out the back of the visitor center and waited for our tour to start, in the meantime we worked on our Junior Ranger books we picked up at the VC.

Mammoth Cave National Park is the most extensive system on Earth. 4,000 years of exploration here still doesn’t cover the full length of the caves. There is 365 miles of surveyed passageways with is twice as long as any other known cave. Geologists think there could be 600 miles of undiscovered passageways. This vast cave system holds one of the world’s most diverse cave ecosystems with 130 forms of life. Most of these inhabitants are very small. Most of these are special cave dwellers that cannot live anywhere else.

Prehistoric peoples explored 10 or more miles of the cave 4,000 years ago. Cave exploration ceased 2,000 years ago, not to resume until the cave was rediscovered in 1798.

It’s time for our tour! Down the walkway we go into the cave.

We walked down steps to get into the cave.

Don’t forget to bring a coat, it’s cold in the cave.

The walk down was gorgeous, I would like to come back to explore what this park has to offer above ground.

We walked our way through the cave and back, not much to see and its hard to take pictures. We stopped for a great talk with a ranger about the ceiling art, was fun to listen to, otherwise you were on your own on this tour.

It was nice that we could move at our own pace, but without a tour guide we really didn’t learn much on this “tour”. Back to the entrance to go up the steps and out. I think we are done here for the day.

Due to Covid we had to send in our Junior Ranger books. This is the only park that doesn’t send them back with the badges!!!! WHAT???? Yes, we got our badges back but not our books. Oh well you live and you learn. Passports stamped, badges earned, we are heading back to Cincinnati.

I think this is a great park with lots of perks, things to do and cool things surrounding it, I just think we need to re-visit when there isn’t a pandemic going on.