Touring Day. We headed down to Bowling Green to take a tour at the Lost River Cave. This is a private cave and not part of the Mammoth Cave National Park. Bowling Green is about 30 miles away.
Oh, we are back in Central Time and will be for a few more days before we head back into Eastern Time.
Anyway, back to the story. We headed to the cave and found it without too much trouble. We pulled into the parking lot and figured out we just missed a tour by about 10 minutes. That meant we had to hang around for a bit. This cave tour doesn't involve a lot of walking as it is a boat trip on the underground river. You do have to walk down to the cave but it is an easy walk on pavement. On the way down your guide give you a little information about the area. The first thing you visit is a blue hole -
A blue hole is a place where the underground river is exposed on the surface. This blue hole had a lot of history. It used to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest, deepest river. The river is 400 feet long and they used to think it was 437 feet deep. Turns out it is really only 16 feet deep.
You soon come to the entrance to the cave.
Off to the left is the world's only underground nite club. This used to be a happening place back in the 30's, 40's, and 50's. It is still used today for special events like weddings and local proms. Soon you are entering your boat and floating into the cave. I took a few pictures but they didn't turn out too good. Here is a decent one.
The boat tour lasts about 20 minutes or so before you return to the dock. They do take the obligatory group photo and try to sell it to you at the end of the tour. After that you have a choice to just leave or to wander around. We wandered. One thing they do have on the grounds was a butterfly habitat.
We saw some butteries there but I think it is the wrong time of year to see a lot. We soon made our way back to the car and headed to the Corvette Museum. We decided to have lunch first and we ate at the Corvette cafe. The food was OK, not great. I ordered a turkey pannini but they gave me a cold turkey sandwich on sourdough. I asked what that was all about, since the definition of a pannini is a grilled sandwich. The girl said I had to ask to get it grilled. So I asked. Bill was just about done with his by the time I got mine back. We decided not to tour the actual museum but did walk around in the lobby a bit. I took this picture of a concept Corvette from the 60's.
We drove back to the campground but decided to make a stop at the Mammoth Cave National Park Visitor's Center and check on tours for tomorrow. Many of the tours allow you to book on-line but some you have to buy the tickets in person that day. I wanted to see how busy they were. Turns out that there was a tour in the Frozen Niagara section of the cave that would start at 5:00 PM and there were still tickets available. With our park passes it would only be $5.00 each so we bought the tickets and drove the 2 miles back to the rig. We rested until it was time to go back.
Our tour was for 5:00 PM so we got there a little early and checked out the store in the Visitor's Center. We also walked over to the hotel and looked around there. We were in our designated area before 5:00 and we boarded our bus quickly. It was about a 5 minute drive to the Frozen Niagara entrance of the cave. There are a couple of steps on this tour but not many unless you took the optional trip down and up a set of 47 steps. Bill covered that but I didn't. It was a very interesting tour and much cooler down below than up above. Here are some pictures we took.
When we got back to the Visitor's Center we took a nice stroll to the original natural entrance to Mammoth Cave. It is only about 100 yards behind the Center. As you walk by you can feel the cool breeze flowing out.
After spending a little time at the entrance we walked back to the car. On our drive out of the park and back to the campground we came across a number of deer munching on the grass by the road.
Back at the campground I took a couple of pictures. One is of our site and the other is the campground ducks. This campground is a Passport America park and we would absolutely stay here again.
Here are all the pictures. Enjoy
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