This past weekend, Patrick and I crossed another national park off our list, Mammoth Cave! Mammoth Cave national park is located an hour and a half south of Louisville, Kentucky. It is an underrated park in my opinion, I was amazed with how incredible Mammoth Cave was! We only spent one day exploring which I think was enough to experience the highlights but I’d recommend at least a weekend to fully explore the park. Here’s a quick guide to tips and things I’d recommend checking out while visiting.

Things to Know About Mammoth Cave

• Mammoth Cave national park is FREE to enter, there are no entrance fees required to access the park.
• Cave tours are the most popular thing to do while visiting the park, tours vary in length and difficulty level.
• I’d recommend booking a cave tour in advance. You have the option to buy a ticket on site at the visitor’s center, but even in February, certain cave tours were sold out!
• After exiting any cave tour, the park requires you to walk across a station with soap to clean the bottom of your shoes. This is to prevent the spread of White Nose Syndrome which is a fungal disease that has been impacting bat populations across the country.
• The park has great lodging options if you desire to stay within the park:
  • Sunset Terrance hotel
  • Historic Cottages (closed in the winter)
  • Woodland Cottages (closed in the winter, these cottages don’t have A/C or heat)
  • Camping
    • Mammoth Cave campground
    • Maple Springs campground (10 minutes from visitor’s center)
    • Houchin Ferry campground (20 minutes from visitors center, tent only).
  • Airbnb’s and hotels in surrounding areas (Brownsville, KY + Cave City, KY).

Things to Do

• Cave tour. When visiting Mammoth Cave, you have to take a cave tour! It’s an incredible experience having the opportunity to explore the caves. The national parks system has done an amazing job making the tours enjoyable and informative. There are several cave tour options that you can learn more about on the park’s website.
  • We decided to take the Frozen Niagara cave tour and it was incredible! This tour was an hour and 15 minutes. It’s the shortest cave tour in time and distance, we only walked about .25 mile on this tour.
  • Other popular tours many visitors choose include:
    • Historic Tour (2 hours, $20 per adult)
    • Domes and Dripstones tour (2 hours, $21 per adult)
    • Gothic Avenue tour (2 hours, $19 per adult)
  • *Starting March 1st, 2024, the park will be increasing the prices of cave tour tickets, learn more on the park’s website.
• Visit the visitor’s center. We were surprised with how big the visitor’s center was! For a smaller national park, this was great to see. The visitor’s center had a small museum like feel inside giving visitors information and history on the cave.
• Go for a hike. There were surprisingly lots of different hikes within the park. Our favorites were:
  • Sunset point trail
  • Cedar sink trail
  • Floyd Collins trail
  • Green river bluff, echo river springs, sinkhole, and heritage trail (combined is 4.3mi round trip)
• Stop by the historic entrance. This is an iconic spot in the park to stop by. It is the largest natural opening of the cave and it was originally the first entrance to the cave when it was discovered.
• Take a picture at the entrance sign.There are two entrance signs for the park, one if you’re entering from Cave City and one if entering from Brownsville.
• Stop by Cave City. We didn’t explore too much here but we’ve heard there are great restaurants and shops in this area.