We’ve driven by the exits for Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, well, every time we’ve driven to Niceville. Finally, FINALLY said ok, we need to stop and see the caves…
That poses a bit of a logistical problem….so, decided to leave home mid-morning and arrive at the hotels near the park on Wed night, do the caves Thursday, and then drive and stop again in Alabama.
Boys playing in the woods while we wait for the tour to start. You have to sign up for tours of the caves and we chose the longest one, 4 hours, 600+ steps. Figure if I’m only (probably) going to come here once, we might as well see as much as we can!
I will have to go and rescue the photos off of Cpher’s camera for a post one of these days…..
Do you know what caves mean? Shitty shitty photos. Granted, I’m only using the Iphone camera but man, there’s two(!) that turned out well enough to post here.
So, what are the caves like? The first half of the tour I’d have to tell you was boring…really just seemed like we were in a big tunnel (with a roof that looked like you see above). A really nice path (beaten down by foot traffic, built by volunteers and other agencies over the years, and lights that are turned on as you go along spaced about every 100-200 feet maybe? you can see in this picture off in the distance (that’s the direction we came) a general impression of the lighting.
That’s the park ranger/tour guide…thought he did a nice job.
About half way through there is a snack bar (they finally installed an elevator, and added some facilities here). Best photo I could get of the boys even though there is more light here. About 50-60 degrees inside…boys were a little cold at times but once you were walking you were fine.
The second half of the tour was more interesting geologically and the boys enjoyed that part the best. Several parts where you were single file (really tall ceiling but the rocks were right up against you), less ‘tunnel’ cave and more open spaces and caverns. The more ‘famous’ areas, Frozen Niagara, etc., are at the end of this tour and so we saw those areas. Everyone kind of beat by the end of it and happy to be heading south. Hit Montgomery about 8:30 pm and called it a night……more pizza, more swimming.
