After we finished our hike in the Mark Twain National Forest, we were looking at the map and planning our route to New England. We noticed that on our way through Kentucky, we’d be passing close by Mammoth Cave National Park. Surprisingly, neither of us had ever been there before. So we booked a campsite for four nights that also happened to correspond with our anniversary.

Mammoth was established as a National Park by Congress in 1926 and opened in 1941 at the dawn of the US involvement in WWII. But it had been explored by humans for thousands of years who ventured miles into the tunnels collecting salts and minerals from the cave walls. During the War of 1812 it was mined for saltpeter, and soon after that it grew into a popular destination attracting for people of all sorts. Explorers, naturalists, scientists and the curious came from all over the world to peer into the dark maze that snaked beneath these Kentucky hills. 

Before we toured the cave, however, we took a day to get cleaned up, find a large tree stump in the middle of a field, and tie-the-knot for another year and a day. This was our sixth hand-fasting, and just the second one we’ve done in a national park. Then, over some amazing food (that Ren had been planning for weeks it seems) and a bottle of good Spanish wine, we reminisced about all our adventures so far and pondered what the next year would bring.

The next day we scheduled our cave tour. Most were sold out (we should have made our reservation online when we booked the campsite), but there were 2 tickets available for the Violet City Lantern Tour. This was a 3-hour, 3-mile hike through the first level of cave tunnels, and included passage through some of the cave’s most iconic landmarks like Giant’s Coffin, the saltpeter mines, the tuberculosis huts, the Star Chamber (written about by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1850), and Violet City. The most unique feature of this guided tour was that we used only hand-held lanterns, similar to those used by explorers in the 1800s and early 1900s before electric lights were introduced to the cave. This transformed our experience into something both eerie and elusive as lantern light and shadows flitted over the cave’s features. It took many minutes for our eyes to adjust to the dimness, and even then the high ceilings and distant walls of some of the largest rooms were invisible in the blackness. Only when our ranger guide stopped and cast the beam of a flashlight around would its vast dimensions suddenly appear to us.

At more than 420 mapped miles, the Mammoth Cave system is the longest in the world. Exploring the most well-known and safest parts, there are 10 guided tours to choose from. So we will definitely be coming back for one of the longer, deeper tour with illumination to better see what there is to see. And possibly, we might do the Wild Cave Tour, which is the most difficult one offered. It covers nearly 6 miles and goes for at least 6 hours and includes crawling through tight squeezes, wading underground rivers and climbing over and around physically challenging obstacles. Not for the claustrophobic.

Our last day at Mammoth included hiking several of the trails nearest the Visitor Center down to the Green River, past sink holes, and to the Old Guides Cemetery. It was a beautiful day.

Of course, the caves are only the most famous part of this national Park; encompassing 52,830 acres, there’s lots for us old vanlifers to do here including backcountry camping, hiking on 85 miles of trail, and even 33 miles of canoeing along the Green and Nolin Rivers. Our next stopover here might just be a bit longer than 4 days… for sure!