This Park was quite an adventure, beginning with the drive to the entrance.  We were following the GPS directions from our campground when suddenly we saw a sign saying Road Ends in Water.  What does that mean? We found out when we came to this cute little car ferry. You drive on and it’s about a two minute ride across the Green River. Very cute.

We had made reservations at Mammoth Cave for the Historic Tour, a two hour tour with 440 steps!  Getting into the park was free but I paid $14 for the tour and Richard got his ticket for $7 (another benefit of being old).  There were about 60 of us on the tour but I think they take over 100 people at peak times of the year.  As we walked towards the cave entrance you could suddenly feel a sharp drop in the temperature.  We went from about 80 outside to 54 degrees inside the cave and put on our jackets/long sleeved shirts.  There are no stallagtites/stalagmites in this cave since it is a dry cave but it was very beautiful  We saw the Rotunda, walked across a grate bridge over the Bottomless Pit (kinda creepy looking down), and proceeded through Fat Man’s Misery, where the path was only about 14″ wide and very low ceilings.  Of course at one point during the tour the ranger turned the lights out to let us know that it was truly pitch dark in the cave…and he left the lights off a bit too long for my comfort.  Luckily Rickard was close by to hang on to! Many of the original explorers signed their names inside the cave  Here is one from 1839.

Mammoth Cave has over 400 miles of tunnels and we only saw two miles of that but it was a wonderful tour, with lots of great stories about the original explorers and tour guides, and well worth the price of admission.

We went back a couple days later to check out the Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike and Hike Trail in the park which was challenging and fun.  It was a gravel path with a few steep areas, one where I had to walk my bike up, so we got a good workout.