Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky - June 16th to 19th, 2023
The main attraction of Mammoth Cave is, of course, the large cave system. But there is more to the park than caves. Hiking and biking trails to explore, the Green River to paddle in, and plenty of history to learn round out the activities in Mammoth Cave National Park.
Friday we drove from Charlestown State Park in Indiana to Mammoth Cave Campground in Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Along the way, we stopped in Elizabethtown for groceries, a Tractor Supply to fill our propane tank, and a park for a picnic lunch. Elizabethtown Nature Park was a lovely place for a picnic. The park has walking trails along with a Veteran’s Tribute. There is also a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, an 80% scaled replica of the one in Washington DC. The trails link to the Freeman Lake Park trail, which is just across the road from the Nature Park. It was a lovely place, but we did not take the time to go for a walk. We just ate our lunch in the picnic pavilion, enjoying the view.
While we ate, a singing quartet was rehearsing in the pavilion. Their voices were wonderful. As we were leaving, we walked over and thanked them for providing the lovely lunchtime entertainment. The ladies said they were performing the following evening at a free concert in a nearby park. From what we heard, it should be a great concert.
After checking in at the campground, we went straight for the laundry services at the camp store building. We were getting low on clean clothes and didn’t want to wait another day. While our clothes were in the washing machines, Ann walked over to the Visitors Center to talk with a park ranger to help with our plans in the park. She was considering paddling down the Green River inside the park. However, the park ranger said the water level on the river was too low, as little as one foot deep in places, and didn’t recommend paddling. No swimming is allowed in the river. They don’t want people stepping on the bottom of the river because a rare muscle lives in the river. The ranger did give us some recommendations for hiking. The one was a four to five mile loop around the area near the Visitors Center. The other area would be on the north side of the river, in the Big Hollow area. The trails on the north side are rougher and in need of maintenance. A recent storm has left a lot of downed trees and the park service is short on staff available to clean up the trails. GPS trackers are recommended when hiking in the northern part of the park so you don’t get lost. Since the Green River water level is low, the Green River Ferry was closed. That means it is a long drive around to the north area of the park, about an hour by car.
Of course, the main attraction at Mammoth Cave National Park is the cave. However, we learned the hard way, that the cave tours sell out well in advance. We’ve been to Mammoth Cave several times before, but that was years ago, when you could just arrive and sign up for a tour later in the same day. Those days are gone. We got online a couple of days before, only to grab the last two tickets for the last tour on the last day we were staying in the park. We would recommend signing up for cave tours a couple of weeks in advance. Then, hopefully, you can choose from the array of different tours and times that suit your fancy.
While we were finishing up our laundry, we walked into the camp store to check out what they had for sale. The hand-dipped ice cream immediately caught Ann’s eye, so naturally, we had to buy some. The ice cream is from a local creamery in Bowling Green, Kentucky, called Chaney’s Ice Cream. The store only had four different flavors, but the ice cream was pretty tasty.
Saturday we went for a hike right from the campground. We basically made a big loop around the area, following the White Cave, Sinkhole, Echo River Springs, Two Springs, Green River Bluffs, Historic Entrance, Old Guides, and Heritage Trails. We also took a couple of spurs to some overlooks, the Dixon Cave, the Old Guides Cemetery, and the Mammoth Dome Sink. The loop took us by all of the highlights in the area, except for maybe Engine No. 4, a historic train engine, which is located between the Visitor Center and the Camp Store. We reached the picnic area at the end of the Green River Bluffs Trail just in time for lunch.
The best overlook of the Green River was along the Green River Bluffs Trail. The Green River looks like it would be a lovely river to paddle on. The shortest accessible stretch is from Dennison Ferry to Green River Ferry, about a four hour paddle. We’ll have to come back, hopefully when the river water level is higher.
In total, we went 7.6 miles with an elevation gain of 823 feet in three hours and 45 minutes. It was hike number 28 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2023 and hike number 34 of our National Park Series.
The rest of the day we spent relaxing at our campsite. A deer walked through the woods of the campground several times. It didn’t seem too bothered by all of the people around. It was the weekend. The campground was pretty full. It was nice to see all the families tent camping.
Sunday we got the e-bikes out and rode the Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike & Hike Trail. The trail follows the railroad corridor, somewhat, that was used to haul passengers from Glasgow Junction (now Park City) to Mammoth Cave. The trail is about nine miles from the Visitor Center to Park City, following close to Mammoth Cave Parkway most of the way. However, it is out of sight of the road the majority of the time. There are several sights and interpretative signs along the wa y, including the historical Furlong cemetery and Sloan’s Crossing Pond.
There are a handful of sections that are labeled as steep, and the park service recommends that you walk your bike down these sections. However, we did not find them that bad. As long as your brakes are good and you keep your speed down, they are manageable without walking. Please use common sense and don’t go fast down these sections. Taking a tumble in the coarse gravel or colliding with something or someone else would quickly turn a fun ride into a horrible experience, not only for yourself, but possibly for others as well.
On the way down to Park City, we stopped at both Furlong Cemetery and Sloans Crossing Pond. There is a short walking path around the pond. We hopped off our bikes and strolled around the pond to check out all of the frogs and turtles. We heard a lot more frogs than we could see. They are so well camouflaged.
The last time we rode our bikes, in Charlestown State Park in Indiana, we needed to fill Ann’s back tire up with air because it was a little low. When we pulled our bikes out for our ride in Mammoth Cave National Park, the back tire was low again. We filled it up before we started. However, it was looking a little low again when we stopped at Sloans Crossing Pond. Uh-oh. It must be a slow leak. We debated about continuing our ride or turning back. Nine miles is a long way to walk a 65 pound bike. However, if it came to that, one of us could ride back to get Red Tail and drive back to pick up the other one, since the trail crosses the road several times.
We decided to continue. We stopped and put air in the tire one more time before reaching Park City. Park City is a small town. In the center of town, on the corner of Mammoth Cave Road and Louisville Road is Miss Betty’s. It is a diner and the place was hopping. We decided to eat lunch there. Even though Miss Betty’s has a pretty large eating area, across two rooms, we were lucky to grab one of the last open tables. We don’t know if they are that busy all the time, or just on Sundays, or just on Father’s Day. They are only open until 2 pm, Sunday through Thursday, and until 8 pm on Fridays.
Miss Betty’s menu consisted of homemade southern cooking items. Keith had sirloin steak with green beans and cottage cheese. Ann tried the Hot Brown again so she could compare it with the one she had in Louisville. She had a salad and a roll for her sides. Miss Betty’s version of the Kentucky Hot Brown had ham, unlike the one she had at Bristol Bar & Grill; however, it did not have any turkey on it that Ann could tell. The bread was a little crispier at Miss Betty’s. Both versions were tasty, but a little different from each other. For dessert, blackberry cobbler satisfied Ann’s craving while Keith enjoyed his cherry cobbler. Both of our cobblers, of course, were with a scoop of ice cream. We waddled out of Miss Betty’s with smiles on our faces.
Before we started heading back, we filled the bike tire once again. It had gotten pretty soft while we were enjoying our lunch. We didn’t make any stops on the way back, trying to make sure we made it back before Ann’s tire went flat and before the rain. The forecast called for rain starting at about 3 or 4 pm. We only stopped once at Sloans Crossing Pond to put more air in the tire. The 10 miles we rode on the way to Park City took us two hours and forty minutes, including our stops and spurs. On the way back, we covered 9.3 miles in one hour and 13 minutes, including the 5 minutes it took to fill the bike tire back up at Sloans Crossing Pond.
Despite being a rails to trails route, the trail is a lot of ups and downs. The way back had more elevation gain (581 feet vs. 472 feet), so we turned on the pedal assist more often on the way back. On the way down to Park City, we used the power less often, usually only at power level 1 (out of 4), with an occasional power level 2. On the way back, we fluctuated between power levels 1 and 2, with an occasional level 3 with only a few stretches of no power assist. By the time we reached the campground, our bike batteries were still at the full five bars. No recharging was necessary.
When we arrived back at the campground, we inspected the bike tire, but didn’t see any obvious punctures in the tire. We didn’t fell like tackling the tire ourselves, especially since it would be raining the rest of the day and into the next. Finding a bike shop near Nashville, where we were heading in a couple of days, sounded like a better idea. Keith had a squeak on his bike that he wanted someone to look at as well. We believed it was an issue with his brake rotor. We could hopefully get both items taken care of at the same time.
We had forgotten to fill our fresh tank when we arrived at Mammoth Cave on Friday, so our tank was starting to get low. Since we were up on the GoTreads for leveling, we didn’t feel like packing up to drive over to the fresh water fill near the dump station. There was a water spigot just across from our camp site, so we grabbed a few water bottles along with a large pot and the rinse water bin and filled them all up at the spigot. That was more than enough water for making dinner, washing dishes, drinking, and washing ourselves up that night. We were regretting not keeping one of our collapsible water containers that we used in Red Tail Lodge One (our VanDOit camper van). We’ll have to pick one up somewhere.
We sat outside until the rain hit, then headed inside.
Our guided cave tour reservation was for 10:15 am on Monday for the Historic Tour. It rained all Sunday night, but let up in the morning, just in time for us to walk over to the Visitor Center for our tour. It was only a ten minute walk from the campground.
We picked up our tickets at the cashier in the Visitor Center. Ann only read the email as far as arriving half an hour early to get the tickets. If she would have read all the way to the bottom of the email, on her phone, then she would have discovered that she could have downloaded the tickets as a PDF onto her phone and no ticket would have been required. Beware that there is not good cell service at the Visitor Center, so PDF’s should be downloaded ahead of time.
We arrived early, so we had about an hour to spend visiting the displays and videos inside the Visitor Center before our tour started. Hunter Wood was our tour guide for the Historic Tour, an excellent guide. The tour was two hours long, covering two miles of the most well-known areas of the cave. Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system in the world, with 426 miles of surveyed passageways, with more left to discover. So we only toured 0.5% of the cave. The Historic Tour goes through some of the oldest toured sections of the cave, including Fat Man’s Misery, Tall Man’s Misery, and the Bottomless Pit.
It was nice to see the park service acknowledge how large of a role African-American slaves played in the history of the cave. Enslaved people worked the saltpeter mining operations in the cave during the early 1800’s. Later, slaves were the guides who led the tourists through the cave. One of them, Stephen Bishop, not only worked as a guide, but also explored and mapped out the cave. His hand-drawn map of almost ten miles of cave passages, drawn in 1842, was considered the authoritative map of the cave system for four decades.
After our tour, we headed back to the campground for lunch, just before the rain started up again. There was a break in the rain around 2 pm, so we walked over to the camp store for ice cream. The rest of the day, we hung out in Red Tail, listening to the rain pour down. Since we had been parked in the shade and the rain for over three days straight, we were running low on fresh water and battery power. We filled a couple more water bottles to stretch our water supply. To save power, we kept the inverter off until we needed to run the microwave. We managed to heat up leftovers in the microwave for dinner, but the inverter was complaining loudly that our batteries were low. All will be better the next day when we leave.
Mammoth Cave is mainly a dry cave, so there are not many cave formations, like Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. But we still recommend taking a cave tour. If you can’t get tickets for one of the guided tours, we believe there is a short self-guided tour that is normally always available. However, be sure to also check out the rest of the park.
Check out our related video: Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
(Ann)