After working all night at the church picnic, we woke up ready to go camping! But where? There were a couple of places we had in mind but we settled on Mammoth Cave National Park. We packed up in about 2 hours, so of course when we arrived we were running to the camp store every 15 minutes to pick up something we had forgotten...butter, mustard, aluminum foil, grill tools. I need to make a printable list of everything we need to take for future use!
So, back to Mammoth Cave. The campsites and bathrooms were the nicest of all other parks in Kentucky. The sites were spacious (we could have easily fit 3 tents) and very clean. The bathrooms were clean as well. It also wasn't over crowded and there was plenty of shade.
Setting up the Tent!
We got there Saturday afternoon and set up camp. We couldn't get any tickets for cave tours because they were all sold out, so we went on a ranger-led nature walk instead. It was a short hike and we were the only ones. We got a personal tour. The ranger led us down to Echo cave which is an underground cave full of water. Water bubbles up from the cave and flows to the Green river, which is only about 1/4 mile away. She taught us about poison ivy and said we could walk down to the cave if we wanted. The water coming up from the cave was 54 degrees...or freezing cold! The kids played around in the water and on the sandy, sandy bank!
Those toes have got to be freezing!
Riding Mommy's back on the trail.
Down time at the Camp
Hanging out at the Camp
No Utensils? No Problem!
That night we cooked dinner over the flames and realized we had
forgotten forks and knives so it was a bit difficult to eat our steak.
We felt like real hunter-gathers eating steak with our hands! We cooked
the baked potatoes right in the flames and they turned out great too!
The next morning we arrived at the visitors center at 8 am when it opened and got our cave tour tickets. We took the "Frozen Niagara" tour and the "Mammoth passage" tour. Both are rated as "easy" for people with small children.
The Frozen Niagara tour was great because we learned a lot about cave geology. We learned about stalactites, stalagmites, and the kids favorites "popcorn", "grapes", and "bacon". There were some tight passages, some ducking, and some stairs that the kids found frightening (mostly Zach)..but we made it down.
Bus Ride to Frozen Niagara
Because of the white-nose bat disease, they make you walk across a soapy Lysol and water mat when you come off out of the tours. This is supposed to prevent you from carrying the fungus that causes the white-nose disease into other caves. They don't know if Mammoth Cave has the bat disease, but they don't want it to spread before they find it, so they use this preventative measure.
After this tour we drove around the park. We took both ferry's across the green river and inadvertently drove to Nolin Lake for lunch. We were trying to find Houchens ferry road, so we could check out the other campground, but we got lost and ran into Nolin lake. We found it's very close by! At Nolin, we ate lunch at a stinky picnic area and then learned how to skip rocks at the marina. We checked out the campground there. It wasn't nearly as shaded at Mammoth Cave...more like full sun!
Skipping Rocks and Napping in the stroller!
We eventually found Houchen's ferry road. It is a long gravel road
that ends at the green river. You take a ferry across the river and the
campground is right on the river. No water or bathrooms though!
After our drive, we took the Mammoth Passage tour into the dry part of the cave with large rooms. This tour was more about the history of the cave. Zachary enjoyed hearing the stories of the early woodland people over 2000 years ago and about how Mammoth Cave helped the US win the French and Indian War thanks to the salt petre that was found there.
Olivia in the cave..she slept most of the 2nd tour.
Overall, we had a great trip! Olivia slept through the night both nights! Some people might think we are crazy to camp with a 3 month old, but really it wasn't hard. It was easier than a trip to the zoo where the crowd can make it really hard to keep up with 4 kids. I slept like a dream on the REI inflatable camp mat...we are going to have to get another one of those! It was literally like sleeping in our own beds!
Good Morning!
Look at that beautiful smile!
Jambalaya with Sausage...it looks like Vincent is crying here but he isn't! He's just begging for more!
When we woke up, we looked up on the tent and these were on the top!
Silly Kid Pics! Open umbrella in a car?
Turkey Sighting!!
Asleep on a hike!
The Main Entrance to Mammoth Cave.
Another great part of the National Parks is the Junior Ranger Program. They've made it a little easier to obtain. You used to have to attend a certain number of ranger programs and do outdoor activities. That wasn't usually feasible if you were only in the park one day or not camping. Now kids earn a certain number of points (based on how many activity pages they do). Activity pages include puzzles/park trivia. It's a bit easier, but the book itself is more entertaining for the kids.
We can't wait to go back, especially when the kids are older and we can do more difficult tours and maybe even take a canoe/kayak trip down Green River. It really was a neat place and a great place to camp. Hopefully this will be just one of our fun camping adventures this summer.
@@If some of these pictures are blurry, it is because my good camera died half way through the trip and I had to use my camera phone.
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