Our 2nd National Park… Mammoth Cave

We left Nashville early and drove just 1.5 hours to reach Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest known cave currently mapped at 412 miles. To our surprise, we were visiting the cave on it’s 78th birthday (it’s anniversary of becoming a National Park). The celebration included fun activities for kids, plus birthday cake!

We arrived at Mammoth Cave a couple of hours before our scheduled tour, so we explored the hiking trails above ground, then we participated in birthday activities like pin the bat in the cave, trivia, painting, candle blowing contest, and more.

We chose a tour called “Domes and Dripstones” mostly because it was age-appropriate for our family. It was a 2 hour tour and a really great way to see the cave and lots of formations.

There were so many steps to get down to the bottom. The whole experience was completely different from Carlsbad Caverns National Park which we visited a couple of years ago.

Can we all agree that it’s just pretty stinking impossible to take pictures in caves?! These photos are from Brian’s phone; I deleted all of mine, they were so bad!

Okay, enough cave pics, right? Mammoth Cave was pretty cool… well, except for the cave crickets, those were just creepy, crawly, and awful. Luckily we didn’t encounter any bats, phew! We would definitely recommend the Domes and Dripstones tour if you’re visiting Mammoth Cave with your family. Two hours was perfect; it was informative, exciting, and the boys had fun the entire time. Onto the next stop!