Mammoth Cave National Park is located in central Kentucky. As you may have guessed, the main feature of this park is Mammoth Cave. It is the longest known cave system in the world with over 400 miles of passage ways mapped out.
Cave Tours
A visit to Mammoth Cave National Park isn’t complete without touring the cave. Tickets must be purchased to tour the cave. There are many, many tours to choose from with varying lengths of time and levels of difficulty. We chose to do the 3 hour Violet City Lantern tour. Every guest received a lantern (with an actual flame) prior to entering the cave. Then we followed a ranger into the cave and he led us on a 3 hour tour for 3 miles underground. We exited through a different opening and took a bus back to the visitor center where we started.
We wanted to do something fairly adventurous, so we chose this tour. There are other shorter tours that cover less ground. Here is a link to the Mammoth Cave National Park site with descriptions of available tours. Note that it is recommended you purchase tickets in advance. When we arrived for our tour, other tours that day were sold out.
Biking
We were driving in from Cumberland Falls State Park, which was several hours away. We wanted to play it safe and planned to arrive quite a bit earlier than our tour start time. Because we didn’t run into any delays on the road, we did arrive several hours early. I noted that there was a bike-friendly path in the park, so we decided to take the bikes for a ride.
I verified ahead of time that the visitor center parking lot had over-sized vehicle parking, which was key for us since we were towing our camper at the time. We parked here, pulled out the bikes, and took off down the Mammoth Cave Railroad Bike and Hike trail, which connected to the visitor’s center area. The trail was a little hilly, but it was a great way to get out and see the park.
For more information about biking inside the park, here is a link to the Biking page of the Mammoth Cave National Park website.
Camping
Originally, we planned to camp at the Mammoth Cave campground, just down the road from the visitor’s center and cave. However, we discovered that the site we booked would not work for us because the turn radius was too tight. I verified online ahead of time that we had a pull-through site of an appropriate length, but we just weren’t comfortable with the tight turn radius of the pull-through driveway itself.
Plan B: We found a nearby campground (Wax Campground) and booked a site there. As it turned out, we were able to get a lake-front site and it was beautiful! Another plus is that we had an electric site at this campground. We would have been dry camping at Mammoth Cave. Normally, we enjoy dry camping, but it was so hot that we were happy to have an electric site that allowed us to run our AC. This campground is definitely on our list if we return to this area again.
Other Activities
In addition to cave tours, biking, and camping, there are other activities in the park such as hiking, canoeing/kayaking, and fishing. Here is a link to to the “Things to do” page on the Mammoth Cave National Park website.
Time to Visit
We visited in late May 2022, and it was hot outside! We really appreciated the cool air temperature inside the cave. The temperature typically stays around 54 degrees (Fahrenheit) inside the cave year-round. We brought lightweight long-sleeve shirts to wear over our t-shirts inside the cave.
It was very crowded at the time of our visit and I’m glad we booked our tour well in advance because tours were sold out. I’m also glad we arrived early in the day, so we were able to get an over-sized vehicle parking spot at the visitor’s center. The parking lot got crowded and normal-sized vehicles started parking in the designated over-sized vehicle parking. This is something to be aware of if you are planning on visiting late in the day with an RV.