Chapter 24: Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
- traci wilson
- Jun 26, 2025
- 7 min read
We stayed at Diamond Caverns Campground & Golf Resort, our last Thousand Trails Park for this trip. It has a strange setup because the office is on one side of the highway and the park is on the other. The golf course was in yet another location although we never went to check that out. A cool detail about this location is that the office is next door to Diamond Caverns, a cave not associated with the larger Mammoth Cave. Our guide told us (yes, we did a tour of the cave) if they found that Diamond Caverns connected in any way with Mammoth, it would be taken over by the national park. As of now, it remains a privately owned attraction just outside the park boundary.
When we checked in at the campground the clerk said another RVer had left early so we were able to change from a back-in site to a pull through with full hookups which made Dave exceedingly happy. We had a big maple tree next to us that provided some shade for which we were exceedingly grateful! The road leading to our site needed a lot of maintenance, as did the rest of the park—a whole lot of deferred maintenance here, which is probably why it didn’t get a very high rating on RV Wizard. For our purposes, though, it sufficed.
We were at this location for three full days. The first day we took the dogs for a five-mile trail run on a rail trail just inside the park boundary. The trail is nine miles long and follows the path of the former Mammoth Cave Railroad that used to transport wealthy visitors to Mammoth Cave before automobile travel became more affordable. The section we chose was challenging with a steep uphill grade and rocky path most of the way to the turn around so we were pretty worn out by the end. The heat and humidity didn’t help either! We were glad we’d just bought new trail runners because all the rocks would have been uncomfortable in regular running shoes.
After the run and some breakfast we went to Diamond Caverns. We weren’t sure what to expect but were pleasantly surprised by how nice it was. It was a relatively small cave but the tour still took an hour and cost $24 per person. Our guide was very informative and told us all about the history of the cave. It had all the usual cave formations you’d expect in a living cave and some of them were quite beautiful, especially the ribbon formations. There were some very steep, narrow sections we had to squeeze through, but hey, that’s what makes it fun, right? We went on a Thursday so our group was small—only five of us—which made for a nice intimate tour experience. I thought it was a great cave and worth the cost.
The next day we went running (five miles) with the dogs on the rail trail again, but this time we chose a section further away that didn’t have the steep climb so it was much easier going. Pretty scenery but nothing earth shattering. This was our day to visit Mammoth Cave, the obvious reason for coming here. Mammoth Cave is another national park that doesn’t require a park pass (we’re finding that a lot). Parking is free, but the cave tours are not. The price varies depending on which tour you choose. It ranges from $12 to $79, with most tours falling between $23 and $49.
Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest known cave system with over 400 miles of known passageways. Scientists (speleologists) believe there’s a lot more of the cave that hasn’t yet been discovered. There are eighteen different tours to choose from, and all but one require advanced reservations. There is a self-guided option, the shortest of all the tours, lasting approximately 30 minutes, that doesn’t go very far into the cave. We found out too late about needing reservations so the only tour still available a week before we were due to arrive was the historic tour. Note: if you want to do the more popular tours during the high season I would strongly recommend making reservations a couple months in advance!
Our group for the historic tour was huge—110 people! I’ve never gone through a cave with such a large tour group. Despite the size of our group, the tour went surprisingly smooth. We had a ranger leading the way and another bringing up the rear. There weren’t any restrictions as far as age of children allowed on the tour so there were a few young ones in our group. One couple in particular had a toddler and a baby that fussed and cried throughout the tour and detracted somewhat from the experience but that was the worst of it.
We entered the cave though the natural entrance, a huge opening with a waterfall in the middle. We were hit by a blast of cool air as we descended a long set of stairs leading to the cave entrance. It felt refreshing on such a hot day! This cave was different from others I’ve visited. It was massive! It wasn’t as tall as, say, the big room at Carlsbad Caverns, but it was long and wide. The section this tour covered was two miles long and took two hours to complete due to the large group and the stop and start nature of a tour. We paid $24 each, the same as Diamond Caverns.
We learned that the cave was formed by an ancient river that carved out miles of passages. According to park literature, Paleo-Indians explored about ten miles of the cave and mined minerals from 4000 to 2000 years ago. Later, European American settlers rediscovered the cave and mined it for saltpeter which they used to make gunpowder. Then around 1816 people started coming to the cave for exploration. In 1838 three enslaved men—Stephen Bishop and Mat and Nick Bransford—began to guide visitors. Bishop discovered many miles of cave including the previously impassable ‘bottomless pit’. The cave became a national park in 1926.
After going though the natural entrance, we found ourselves in a huge cavern with a wide paved walkway at least the width of four people. As we descended further into the cave, our guide stopped us at a large rock formation called the giants coffin. He provided some history on the cave then turned out the lights to show how completely and totally dark it was. After a couple of minutes he lit a small lantern to show what early explorers would have seen back in the 1800s. After the giants coffin the passage started to narrow.
It got tighter and tighter as we went deeper, taking us through a section called fat man’s misery and immediately following that, into tall man’s agony, where—you guessed it—the passage became very narrow and the ceiling very low. Even I had to turn sideways and duck! We walked over the bottomless pit on a see-through grated metal bridge that made me just a little nervous—I can’t lie— and yes, you cannot see the bottom! To think that Stephen Bishop first crossed it using ladders laid across the opening, then crawled across to the opposite side is truly remarkable!
This part of the cave was interesting due to the immense size and history, but it didn’t have the types of formations that I love about caves—stalactites, stalagmites, flow stone, cave popcorn, curtains—you get the drift. It was just rock. Until the end that is. The last main point of interest in the cave, and at the deepest part of the tour, was Mammoth Dome and the tower, a 175-foot-high area with a waterfall that got us very wet! It was in this spot that we saw the only living cave formation of the tour, a flowstone called caramel falls. It was spectacular!
From there we climbed a very long series of see-through metal grated steps back up to the wide part of the cavern where we’d started. Don’t get me wrong, Mammoth is a living cave. Just not the part we got to see. We couldn’t get that tour because we made reservations too late. Regardless, I’m glad we did this tour. The section of the cave that you see on the historic tour is unique and teeming with history. It does make me want to return to the cave in the future, with proper reservations made well in advance to explore some of the other parts of this amazing cave.
For the last day, we decided to hike with the dogs (they’re allowed on all park trails, just not inside the cave). We did a sort of medley of trails to get a more expansive feel of the place. We hiked another two miles on the rails trail and learned about the history. Then we hiked the Green River Bluffs Trail, working our way through mostly viewless forest with some cool rock formations. We detoured along the historic entrance trail—passing where we’d entered the cave the day before, enjoying the blast of cool air as we passed by, and came back on the Dixon Cave overlook trail. Dixon Cave is another entry point that is no longer used.
We did a short loop on the Echo River Spring Trail, where we saw the spring but the river was so silty and brown from recent rains and flooding that it didn’t look very nice. We dropped the dogs off at the trailer and did another short section called Sand Cave Trail. This spot was rich with history and ghosts from the past. It was the location where amateur cave explorer Floyd Collins drew national attention when he became trapped in a narrow passage of the cave while exploring it. Rescue efforts went on for two weeks as people from all over the country flocked to the area to witness the rescue attempt, which unfortunately failed. He died in the cave after a section collapsed cutting him off from the rescuers. 10,000 people came to the area because of Floyd and the media attention proved instrumental in Mammoth Cave becoming a national park. We ended up hiking a total of five and a half miles and learned a whole lot about the area.
Next, we’re heading to Sauget Illinois and the Cahokia River Parque where we will hopefully explore the Cahokia Mounds, an ancient Native American civilization, the largest of its kind in North America at the time, and visit Gateway Arch National Park across the river in St. Lous Missouri.
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