May 2022

Kentucky has a lot of caves–5,000 as of 2018. It ranks fourth in the USA in number of documented caves. The reason for this is that about a quarter of the state is has limestone under the surface which has the right conditions for cave formation.

Our Thousand Trails Campground named Diamond Caverns lies within the Mammoth Cave National Park boundaries so we made a reservation to go on a tour of the cave. There are many tours available, but we opted for the easiest one with only 12 required stair steps, and lasting only an hour and 15 minutes. Some of the tours lasted for 2 or more hours, were 2 or more miles in length and had 400+ stair steps.

While we waited for our bus ride to the cave tour, we wandered around the Visitor Center. I saw this 3-D map of a portion of the cave. It illustrates the complexity of Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest known cave system.

Thirty minutes before our tour, we made our way to the bus stop. Our group members sat on concrete benches under a covered waiting area. They were mostly older people and families with young children.

Our bus was a converted school bus painted green. It took me back to elementary school days when we rode buses on our field trips. Now I am a grandma going on my own field trip! The day was cool and cloudy, so none of the windows were open. I was glad for that.

We boarded the bus after showing our tickets. The bus ride took us through bright green woods and forests of deciduous trees until we arrived 10 to 15 minutes later at the door to the cave which looked like a utility building in the side of a hill.

I was disappointed that our cave tour started as a small narrow passageway. When I think of “mammoth”, I think of a huge cavernous opening with high ceilings. Apparently, there are such places in Mammoth Cave, but that would have been a more strenuous tour.

The photo is a little blurry, but you can see two prominent stalagmites growing up from the floor. They are stalagmites because they “might” reach the ceiling. Stalagmites are formed when water drips on the floor and the minerals in the water build up into a formation like this.

These stalactites look like a bunch of carrots hanging down. They are stalactites because they have to hold on “tight” to the ceiling. Stalactites are formed when water-dissolved minerals drip from the roof of a cave. When exposed to air, the minerals solidify and form stalactites.

These sheet-like formations are called flowstones.

We finally came to the Frozen Niagra formation for which the tour was named. I think it looked more like a melting ice cream cone.

There were 98 optional stair steps that went down to where we could get a better view of the Frozen Niagra formation. The 98 optional stairs then became 98 mandatory stairs in order to get back out, as our tour guide informed us. We were game to venture down them, as were most of the others in our tour.

On our way back to the door, our tour guide told us about the creatures that live in the cave. There was a pack rat that had made a stash of litter he found and brought into the cave. There was a spider in a web that was far enough away that I didn’t freak out. (I dislike spiders.)

And there were cave crickets. The cave crickets weren’t visible until she shined her flashlight on the cave ceiling. Then we could see them creeping around. They are very light colored, almost translucent with long antennae. I would have been creeped out if the tour guide had shown us these before we went on the cave tour. How many of them were lurking above our heads as we brushed the cave ceiling, is something I don’t want to know about!

This formation looks like a dinosaur with teeth, don’t you think?

I have seen three large caves: Carlsbad, Wind Cave and Mammoth Cave. Of the three, I liked Carlsbad the best. I have to say, I would not make a good cave woman nor a cave explorer. I’m not claustrophobic, but I like sunshine. I can’t imagine spending time exploring caves with a headlight crawling through tight spaces and enjoying it. But it’s nice there are people willing to do that and people who want to preserve these caves for others to see.

While in the visitor center gift shop, I bought a National Parks Passport book and got my first National Park stamped with the date of our visit. The passport lists all the national parks and their locations by region. When you visit a national park, you can get your passport stamped at the visitor center showing when you visited the park. There’s a way to get stamps for parks already visited, but since we’ve seen 25 or more, I’m not going to try to do that.