Weekend Trip - Mammoth Caves

The last portion of our trip over last weekend took us to Mammoth Caves National Park. Mammoth Caves is about 30 minutes northeast out of Bowling Green, KY (or about 3.5 hours from Murray). The Caves were naturally formed by the local watershed, and is the world's largest cave system.

We signed up to take the history tour, which was a 2 hour, 2 mile round trip hike led by a park ranger. Two of my favorite quotes of his: "I was born and raised here in Kentucky, so I speak Kentucky English", and "Many of you tourists are from the North. We appreciated you sharing your intelligence and money."He took us to the historical entrance to the cave, which was initially discovered in the 18th century. Originally, the owner of the land figured out that he could charge people to enter the caves, and started it as a tourist attraction.

Eventually, the US government purchased the caves and all the land around it, and made it into a National Park.

Inside the caves, the temperature and humidity hardly varies at all, year round. The temperature is usually within 1-2 degrees of 54 F all year, and the humidity is within 5% of 80% humidity as well.

The National Park service has begun the process of replacing all the lighting and wiring that is in the caves with LED lighting, so that they can help to cut down some of the costs related to bringing tourists into the caves. I thought that they did a pretty good job of lighting it well enough to be able to see things, but not to the point where it overpowers what you're experiencing.

People had tried to work in the caves during the 18th century, and one of the projects that we saw were the pipe system built in the caves to help bring water in from the surface. They essentially took long logs, which they had used an auger to drill a hole all the way down the length of. They then connected them to each other as well. This particular set of pipes was used to help drop it down from higher up in the cave, and was probably a couple hundred feet into the cave at that point.

Another view of the cave walls, near the same location as the last photo.

During the 18th century, a lot of people who went into the caves would use candles to burn their name into the walls of the caves. Sadly, there have also been people who have put graffiti over some of these signings in some other areas of the caves.

This sign was placed at a particularly tight portion of the cave tour. The area was approximately 15" wide at this point. But with the height and layout of the cave, it was a passable area at least.  There had also been other areas with either height restrictions or width restrictions, but nothing quite that tight. As the tour guide put it, "There are children on the tour, so if you go to name the rock after you've hit your head with it, make sure it isn't one of those nice 4-letter names."

As we approached the end of the tour, we started ascending back up toward the top of the cave, and were left with this view of the cave walls to our sides. As you might imagine, it was a long way down.

The view looking out over the stairs' railing.

Overall, the tour was extremely interesting. While we didn't see any stalactites or stalagmite, we knew that we were unlikely to see those on this particular tour before leaving the visitors' center. Brynn tells me that there are a lot of caves/caverns back in California, but that none of them are nearly as intense or large as the ones here in Kentucky. The tour guide did tell us that they offer tours of 11 miles of the cave, but that they have mapped over 365 miles of the caves over time.