In 2015 they bought the campground and surrounding property. Then in 2014 they started working on rebuilding the cave. It took four years to sell their place in Michigan and get established in Cave City. They had the good fortune to track down the owners and buy the cave. Because of the nature of their business, they had been thinking of moving to Kentucky. They were disappointed to see that it was closed. Scott and Sara Sendtko had toured CRYSTAL ONYX Cave many times and in 2010 they returned for another visit. In 2009 it was sold to Cumberland Cellular, which has the towers atop of the Knob, and they closed the cave. It opened for tours in 1965 and was owned or operated by Ray Gossett, Wesley Odle, Ed Hay and Ed’s widow Karen. These are just a few ideas and is by no means exhaustive.Cleon Turner found the cave in 1960, Ray Gossett financed the development and for five years they created trails, stairs and bridges. The Bardstown area has some good distillery choices, My Old Kentucky Home and a nice little downtown area once voted the most beautiful small town in America. Louisville is a foodie town and will have good vegan options for you but I personally don’t know about them. The Corvette Museum is about 20-30 minutes south of Mammoth Cave on the way to Nashville if you go that route. There are some nice State Parks including Cumberland Falls and Red River Gorge. Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill is a nice visit. There are plenty of bourbon distilleries to tour in the Lexington, Louisville and Bardstown, KY areas. Lexington area has the thoroughbred horse farms you can tour. It’s extremely popular and the most visited National Park in the country.Ĭheck this recent thread for ideas of what to do in the Louisville area: October will be very busy in that park as the leaves change. You can’t tour on your own and some schools have a Fall Break in October so best to book ahead to avoid disappointment.Ĭheck the Tennessee forums for information on the Smoky Mountain National Park and other locations in that state. October is still a busy time so make your tour reservations in advance. It is incredible that you can still see the log equipment they used 200 years ago because the wood has not deteriorated in this cool, dry climate of the cave.Īgain for me the Natural Entrance and Rotunda was the most impressive feature of the entire cave system and simply a Must See for any visit to the National Park,Īnswer: Kentucky has one National Park, Mammoth Cave National Park and it would be on your route to Nashville. It is also here that you can see the saltpeter works which first commercialized the cave in 1812. It is this large oval space where 3 separate passageways converge under an impressive roof structure. While I know the cave gets its name from the Mammoth Dome, for me the Rotunda is the most impressive section of the cave. Here the passage ways are large and impressive, including the most impressive room we saw on our tour, the Rotunda. It is simply still surreal walking into a large hole in the ground, not to mention this is the primary way people and animals have entered the cave for centuries. However, the most impressive for me was the Natural Entrance. There are many different ways and entrances to tour Mammoth Cave. I could see it being much busier on a nice summer day. We didn’t have an issue, but it was also kind of a crappy day. You also can’t get tickets ahead and they’re first come first served. On the way back, we all but sprinted because we were constantly waiting for stragglers in the back. I would say this is definitely a “must do” if you go, but also a once and done kind of place. The formations are also vastly different than Mammoth Cave so it’s a nice contrast. This is a wet cave and we went on a rainy day, so throughout our tour the waterfalls started to get stronger and appear more places, which was cool to see. I wouldn’t say they’re overly strenuous, and I saw people of varying ability levels do this in flip flops (I wouldn’t recommend this. Our tour guide Dallas was very informative and engaging on his tour.Īs everyone mentioned this isn’t handicap accessible and there are steep steps in and out of the cave. This was one of the many Cave tours we did while visiting Mammoth Cave this July.
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