Mammoth Cave Weekend
I’m sitting here wondering how January and February flew by so fast, with this nagging feeling that the rest of the year is going to do the same.
A lot has happened in just the past month and a half, and I’m continuing my training and rolling with the punches the best I can. Getting a bunch of New Year orders genuinely made my heart happy, and I’ve been exploring some new engraving techniques to make really beautiful necklaces for some wonderful people. I’m also excited to keep expanding the shop and offer a wider variety of jewelry “styles.” I’d spill the beans on what those are, but it’s a little too early—so you’ll just have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I’m going to share one of our little excursions from 2025, since none of my real-time updates are particularly worth mentioning.
2025 Highlight 1: Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
The big, crazy vacations we started planning at the beginning of 2025 got axed pretty quickly, so I was feeling real out of sorts without a national park trip to look forward to in the near-ish future. One afternoon in the middle of a summer workday, I decided to look into a long weekend in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Camping spots and cave tours were filling up fast, so I talked with Max and we locked in plans for Fourth of July weekend. Me being ADHD… I did not connect the dots that it would be a busy weekend because, you know, it was the Fourth of July. So our camping reservations ended up being a different site each night thanks to limited openings.
Anyways, it marked our first road trip in the Subaru Forester we’d gotten the year before. We upgraded vehicles to make adventures like this easier, so it was honestly fun to load it up with camping gear and hit the road. Also, I learned that my husband’s old car—the one we traded in—was basically a death machine on wheels, but… I digress.
We originally wanted to poke around the caves and do something self-guided in the caverns, but we learned real quick while planning that you can only enter the caves with a tour reservation. You can book self-guided tours, but they’re limited to certain areas and only last about 90 minutes (if I’m remembering correctly). And if you’re going in peak summer heat like we did, you’re going to want to stack up those reservations—it’s basically the only real break you get from the blistering temperatures.
Day 1
The first day we explored the area above ground since we didn’t have any reservations for the cave. We walked along some short trails but ran into four important discoveries:
It was hot
There are few above-ground routes
Locals, forgive me - the draw to the park is entirely due to the caves and there isn’t much to see above ground.
It was terribly, unforgivingly hot.
But we made the best of it!
Day 2
Max, being the more rational of the two of us, initially objected to my suggestion of booking an Intro to Caving tour. Check out that link to see the source of Max’s hesitation. After a little persistence, he agreed to try it with me. They gear you up with a helmet, headlamp, knee and elbow pads, and a jumpsuit before you descend into the cave. You’re on active tour trails, but you also get access to special areas that aren’t available on most public tours anymore (hello, Snowball Room). Over the course of the tour—about 210 minutes—you find little nooks in the cave walls and tiny tunnels between rocks, and you squeeze your way through them one person at a time. You learn a lot about the cave and the exact areas you’re shimmying through (many of the squeezes have specific histories), and everyone cheers each other on as passages get tricky… while a select few discover their latent claustrophobia.
I’ve never experienced claustrophobia before, but there’s also no way to predict whether you’re claustrophobic in this specific circumstance until you’re on your hands and knees deep underground with only your headlamp for light. Another thing you might not know about yourself until you’re sliding across cave floors is whether you’re a fast crawler. Max learned he’s not a fan of spelunking. I discovered I can crawl fast as f*ck.
From the first squeeze to the end of the day, I was smiling ear to ear.
Day 3
We started the third day by relocating to our next campsite. After setting up camp twice already, I decided to just unstake the tent and walk it over my shoulder from one end of the campground to the other—straight to our next reserved site—instead of loading and unloading everything from the trunk again. Max followed behind me in the car with the rest of our stuff (he was too embarrassed to be seen walking with me).
We’d planned a day of moseying and hiking since our only other scheduled tour—Domes and Dripstones—was the next day. But it was so hot that we opted to spend a good chunk of the day in the surrounding towns and at the Visitor Center.
Day 4
Early rise to pack up camp on our last day before heading to our final tour. It was, once again, so hot that we packed up a little early and hung out at the Visitor Center for a while beforehand. The reservation website makes it pretty clear: tour tickets aren’t refundable and can’t be transferred. While we were looking up at the screens showing the day’s tour availability, Max pointed out that the Wild Cave Tour—a six-hour, fully immersive spelunking experience—had an open spot. It ended way later than we planned to stay (we were supposed to be heading home that afternoon), and tickets aren’t exchangeable… but my dear sweet angel husband insisted I go to the counter and ask anyway.
In a stroke of luck, they switched me into my six-hour dream tour, and I only had to pay the difference in ticket prices.
I could go on for hours about how much fun this tour was, but you’d never hear the end of it. You crawl your way down about 300 feet deep. You can spot fossilized prehistoric shark teeth embedded in the cave walls, fossilized coral in cavern ceilings, and even underground waterfalls. The tour guides are insanely knowledgeable, and they’ll adapt the route based on the group’s energy. My group was in good spirits, so we got to do a few passages that aren’t typically part of public tours and heard some wild history along the way. You’ll probably spend about an hour crawling through freezing water that’s up over your knees, “stemming” yourself across narrow walls while crossing deep cave drops, climbing over boulders while your teammates are literally climbing underneath the boulder you’re standing on (wild!!!!), and maybe even standing at the bottom of the park’s tallest Cathedral Dome.
All in all, it’s the best $90 I’ve ever spent. Like I said, I could talk about it for hours. If you want to know more, watch this poorly lit video I made to see some of what we got up to. And if you’re debating it because it’s six hours long, I promise it flies by. It was a little painful because my knees and elbows were still bruised from my first spelunking attempt two days earlier—but I was having so much fun I barely noticed.
Recommendations/Tips
Wild Cave Tour & Intro to Caving Tour
Boots that come above your ankle must be worn
Got a chest strap for that GoPro? Ditch it. You’ll be scraping your body against gritty rock and sand and spend a lot of time on your belly dragging yourself through passages, so your equipment will get wrecked. Got a helmet mount? Don’t count on that either. Your guides won’t let you put anything on your helmet that will risk doing damage to the cave when you go crawling. While recording video, I crawled with one hand only and held my GoPro with my free hand. Pretty inconvenient, but worth it for the footage!
People with iPhones got better video/photo than I did with my Hero12 GoPro. I looked into spelunking settings for my camera that people have vetted out on their own to get good results and people’s own cell phones, without fancy settings, got better shots than I did.
If you do the Wild Cave Tour (and especially if your guide is the wonderful, knowledgable, older gentleman Chris) run to the gift shop and pick up the 1908 map for a few bucks. Ask if he’ll highlight the route on the map that you guys took that day. He told me about this and did it for me and it’s now one of my favorite keepsakes.
The yellow highlighted area represents the routes we took in the 6-hour Wild Cave Tour.
Links
Intro to Caving Tour Reservations
Booking page for all Reservations
Miss Betty’s Diner - great spot to eat in the area
A minimalist necklace inspired by the Frozen Niagara formation inside Mammoth Cave. Known for its cascading flowstone that resembles a frozen waterfall, this section of the cave is one of the park’s most iconic stops.
Why choose K2S? We only work with 304 Stainless Steel jewelry. It's hypoallergenic, highly durable (rust, tarnish and scratch resistant), waterproof and low-maintenance. It's the perfect piece to keep your favorite places close to your heart without the fuss. The Staple necklace comes with a 16” chain and is made entirely of stainless steel. Products in gold finishes are 18K plated.
For those who like to take their adventures underground, celebrate your "Type-B kind of fun" personality with a helmet and headlamp minimalist necklace.
Why choose K2S? We only work with 304 Stainless Steel jewelry. It's hypoallergenic, highly durable (rust, tarnish and scratch resistant), waterproof and low-maintenance. It's the perfect piece to keep your favorite places close to your heart without the fuss. The Staple necklace comes with a 16” chain and is made entirely of stainless steel. Products in gold finishes are 18K plated.
