Mammoth Cave trip - short notice

[ScottM]

I am leaving tomorrow morning for a 2 day trip to Mammoth cave National Park. I called today and made reservations for the Historic Cave tour. I chose that one because the majority of the tours were already reserved. It's only a 2 mile tour, and I had hoped to get something that would fill most of the day.

I shouldn't have procrasintated, and made reservations last week, but it's too late to do anything about it.

I haven't been to Mammoth cave since I was a kid, but from what I have read online there are several other show caves in the area of Cave City.

Could anyone that knows the area, provide me with the names of some caves that would be worth visiting. A cave boat tour with good formations would be sweet.

Thanks

[Wayne Harrison]

How about a cave boat tour without good formations?

Lost River Cave in nearby Bowling Green, KY.

[ScottM]

The Cave City local is pretty much a must, it doesn't need to be a boat trip. I am just looking for a nice show cave that can occupy a few hours of my family's time.

[graveleye]

do the Frozen Niagara tour at Mammoth if you have time. Its only about a mile, but it's really a good tour. Go early!

[ScottM]

Just got back from a fun time. We went on the historical tour. I hadn't been to Mammoth since I was a kid, and I totally forgot how big the rooms were. I also learned a lesson. Make tour reservations ahead of time, everything but the tour we took was booked. I will try to post a few pics later on.

Frozen Niagra tour sounded pretty cool, gonna do that one next time we go. And that newly opened cave, Cub Run Caverns is not far from Mammoth National Park also. I picked up all the brochures for the caves in that area I could find.

[caverbob]

Should have done the Great Onyx Cave tour at Mammoth.

[cvr602]

Scott, did you see the caving group there, picking lint in the historic section? We stayed all week from Sunday till Saturday 23rd-29th doing different projects for the park inside the cave.

[ScottM]

Our tour was at 10:45 am on Saturday. No, I didn't see anyone doing any cave clean up. There were so many people on our tour it was hard to see everything going on. I tried to stay in the back of the group the entire trip. What areas of the historic section were you working in?

[cvr602]

Oh, I thought you had your tour on Friday. We worked Friday from 9AM-11:30AM from the rotunda down to standing rock. We were actually doing an educational trip in another cave in the park on Saturday. I did come down to the historic entrance around 12:30-2PM to sit and chat with the guides though.

When the tour opens up again, the Grand Avenue tour is one of the best offered at Mammoth Cave.

If you really have some time available, the NSS has a restoration group(which is what we were doing) that has 3 or 4 weekend camps and a week long camp every year. the website for that is http://www.mcnprestoration.com.

We work on quite a few interesting projects. Hauling old creosote wood out of the river, lint removal, trash clean-up, removing old electrical wires, burying the electrical wires that are being used now to hide them, and many other things.

[George Dasher]

The Historical Tour is a great tour, but so are the other tours.

The NPS shouldn't book the tours 100% up; maybe they shouldn't even allow reservations. They ought to have something for "walk in"s. But maybe they don't...

[Eve]

If they didn't allow reservations at all, people would show up to buy a ticket and not be able to get one for hours later, maybe not even that day. It would be like going to an annoying restaurant that doesn't take reservations and you have to wait with a buzzer thing. What exactly would they do with their three restless kids while they were waiting?

It's just too popular to do that.

[graveleye]

The ranger that took us through the Frozen Niagara tour back in the spring mentioned that tourism to Mammoth was actually way down from previous numbers. Maybe the summer season is bringing out the tourists.

My tour was the first in the morning after a nice hard rain too. It was great because he said he had never seen the New Entrance as drippy as it was that day.

I still cant get over those stairs... wow!!


Now - this might be weird, but I jsut had an awful experience at the dentist getting a crown put in. It hurt so bad ( I guess not enough novacaine) that I had to use the Force to take me out of my body. Guess where I went to find relief?

Mammoth!!

So if you are ever at the dentist and it starts getting uncomfortable, think about a really cool cave. It worked for me.

[George Dasher]

Yea. I know that this reservation thing has two sides, and I don't know the answer. Maybe take some reservations. I know I've gotten there early and everything is pretty much filled up.

I don't know if it is true or not, but someone once told me that Mammoth Cave is the biggest tourist attraction between Disneyworld and Disneyland.

[Sean Ryan]

I don't know if it is true or not, but someone once told me that Mammoth Cave is the biggest tourist attraction between Disneyworld and Disneyland.

I don't know how many non-caving people distinguish between show caves. I have no data to back this up, but I'd imagine the average person in upstate New York looking for a show cave would go locally to Howe or Secret Caverns rather than drive 1200 miles just for Mammoth.

[graveleye]

actually, Mammoth does take on-line reservations for all of their tours through the NPS website. It works well too because you can see how many people are already booked on the tour. If its filled up or too many people for your comfort then you can book another tour or perhaps another day.

Linky:
http://www.nps.gov/maca/Reservations.html