Mammoth Cave National Park, Mammoth Cave KY. April 2013

     We left the Nashville area and drove 75 miles to Park City KY, about 20 miles north of Bowling Green and about 5 miles from Mammoth Cave National Park. This is a new area for us. We are staying at a Thousand Trails/Mid Atlantic Park Diamond Cavers. We wanted to visit the National Park and the Corvette Museum . We will do a review on the RV Park in the future.
On Tuesday we went to Bowling Green to the National Corvette Museum. (See previous post), We also toured the historic downtown of Bowling green.

Historic Fountain Square in Bowling Green KY
 

       We spend six nights in the area. We stayed an extra day because of heavy rain and more storms.  So far on our trip north we are behind 4 days. But that's ok, we do not have a firm schedule. We just have an idea where we want to go, and head in that directions. We do have a few appointments in Indiana for work on our RV so we allowed two weeks to get there. And we made it to our first appointment on time.
     We started a new Label in our blog archives. It is National Parks and Monuments. We have been to a number of each before we started our blog. So we will list all new ones we visit and label them as National parks or National Monuments. We do have some other parks in our blog and as I get time I'll update the label. 

Mammoth Cave encompasses 53,000 acres.

Red Buds in full bloom all over the area

The way visitors used to get to the cave.

Today depending on your tour you take a propane fueled bus

The wet cave system. We enjoyed this cave area with all the stalactites and stalagmites. This tour was called The Frozen Niagara Tour. The cave was a cool 54 degrees. At presant there are 12 different tours, but we were told they will only be givng 4 to 6 different tours this summer because of cost cutting.

 
That is water droplets in the upper right photo. Lower right, Linda taking a break.

Bob ducking, A little low and narrow

A cave cricket. There were bats, but we could not film them as the flash would disturb them.

The dry cave system. This is the Mammoth Passage Tour. This is the biggest entrance to the cave. It is also called the Historic entrance. It was the entrance that was first used to take tours into the cave. It also has some of the biggest rooms.

Those little spots are tiny dust particals floting in the air. The camera makes them look very large.

Salt Petre mining during the Civil War. Use to make gunpower.

The Green River ferry. Sure glad there is a sign

On the ferry, looking ahead and then out the side.

Looking back

Cedar Sink Hike, .8 mile one way. We got to the end and it started to rain, needless to say we got petty wet.  It is a wild flower trail, nice and wide with some steps. We encounterd a few wildflowers and a few turkeys ,  we were a little to early for all the flowers

Going down is not to bad, but.............

This is Joppa church.

Good Springs church and very large cemetery that goes back to the 1800's to the 1960's.

Saw this sign, stopped and backed up to make sure we read it correctly.  Just what is "home grown pizza". This sounds similar to  Nick's( my cousins husband) description about "home made shrimp". Maybe Nick is also a sign maker

There is a camp ground in the national park for RVs. We were told  there is no size limit, but many of the sites we saw were very short, and some very narrow. So use caustion if you have a big rib. There were some big rigs in the campground.

 

Nolin River Lake, a Corp of Engineers lake, located near Mammoth Cave. We took a loop road via the ferry to get to this lake.  Construction started in 1959. A $40 million yearly benefit to the economy of the area.  Winter pool 2890 acres, 30 miles long. Summer pool 5795 acres. Flood pool 14,530 acres, 58 miles pong.  See http://www.lrl.usace.army.mil/nrl