Mammoth Cave

Mammoth Cave, halfway between Louisville and Nashville, is the world longest cave. The National Park has extensive forests with camping, a river ferry, and wild life like this turkeys.


Unlike many caves, most of these passageways don’t have the stalagmites. A Sandstone cap above the caves prevents the water from dripping into the caverns leaving them rough stone but they are hauntingly long. This tour was a 4 mile hike 200-300 feet below ground.

This is one of the oldest tourist attractions in America with the first tours offered in the early 1800s but it doesn’t have the flash to grab the worlds attention any longer.

Halfway through the tour you stop for lunch in an underground cafeteria. The food is ported in. Once a company tried growing mushrooms for export but the Mammoth Mushroom turned out not be so mammoth.

After lunch the trip becomes more interesting with the trail leading down where in ancient times the passageway collapsed and then back up. Part of the latter part of tour takes you through a narrow winding passageway where you can see boulders precariously wedged into place above you.

The Mammoth Tour passed through safely to a last lecture rest stop.

This tour was the longest of the upright tours and ended up at the Niagara entrance where the water flows off the sandstone cap and through the limestone layer and drips into the passageway creating the more familiar cave formations including their most famous the Niagara Falls.

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