These Three Miracles: Mammoth Cave

This past weekend, we went to Mammoth Cave. On our drive back from the beach in June, in the quiet of 3 kids sleeping in the back seat, Tim and I came up with the idea of visiting as many National Parks as we can! We thought while the kids are young and fall break exists, we should take advantage of October! So, this year is our inaugural October National Park visit!

It is only a five hour drive from Memphis to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. We left Saturday morning and stayed two nights. We originally had a campsite booked, but the weather reports the week before helped us decide to sleep INSIDE!! This turned out to be a good decision - it was really cold Saturday night! So, the cabins within the park close in September and a cabin site we looked into near the park had horror reviews about bed bugs (one even talked about a family who was on their way to Vanderbilt Children's for heart surgery and the surgery had to be postponed because of issues the child had from bed bugs - YIKES!!!!!) Needless to stay, we stayed at the hotel within the Park. It was built in the 60's, a strip of rooms with a sidewalk along the front, green space all around. We could see deer outside our back window and they came up the side yard just feet from us when we were playing outside -

pretty cool!

Here are some pictures from our trip!

My friend Fran told us about the Junior Ranger program. Thank you, Aunt Fran!!! The kids completed enough "bat points" in their Junior Ranger book to get Junior Ranger badges and certificates! We've been back for a few days now, and Eli is still wearing his badge everyday!

Inside the cave...

"Frozen Niagra"

A few hikes...

The "Historic Entrance" to the cave. We learned so much! There are 392 miles of the cave system. Amazing!! The guide said most caves are only 50 feet; another "long" cave in Missouri is 30 feet. No other cave comes close to Mammoth Cave!

We went on a one hour tour Sunday morning, and we were all hooked wanting to see more! We saw lots of formations (stalactites and stalagmites, drapery, columns, and "cave popcorn!") and learned that is not the norm of the cave. Monday morning we went on a little longer tour - almost no formations - the cave is mostly very dry - so not many formations. We saw these HUGE rooms in the cave, went through a really narrow windy area called "Fat Man's Misery" and saw a 192 feet tall "Mammoth Dome." All we saw was less than 2 miles of the cave. Really an amazing place to be!