Cave City

One day Lee felt like eating somewhere new.  He suggested going to Bowling Green, Kentucky for lunch.  We had to watch the kids at church later that afternoon, so we postponed the trip until the following Saturday.  After a little bit of research, we found out that there was no reason to go to Bowling Green, so we chose to visit Mammoth Cave instead.
We headed out around noon (after sleeping in of course) and started the hour and a half drive. We had an exhilarating game of the "alphabet game" on the way there and quickly got to Cave City.  We wanted to make sure we got tickets to the tour we wanted to take, so we went straight to the caves without stopping at all the small tourist shops.

When we arrived at the Visitor Center, it was packed.  It probably didn't help that we went on the 4th of July weekend.  We squeezed through to get the tickets to the tour we wanted that didn't start for 2 and a half more hours, but were sadly disappointed when we found out that tour had been sold out for two weeks.  We chose a similar one, but it didn't go by the river and it didn't start for 3 more hours.  So we left slightly disappointed and decided to hit up the local gift shops.

We started at a place that sold rock figurines.  It was pretty horrible.  I'm pretty sure everything that was in there had been in there for 25 years.  All paper products were yellowed.  Lee did find several figurines from his parent's house.  He never knew where they came from until then.  After not finding anything to buy, we went down the road and tried a few more stores.  It was amazing all the junk these stores had!  There was so much rusted, metal junk, it was amazing.  You know nothing had been bought from these stores in years.

After exploring that road a bit, we went back to the cave.  We found a parking spot and waited for our group.  I believe there were a little over 100 in our tour group.  We started down the hill and into the cave.  It was hot waiting for our tour to leave, but it definitely cooled off going into the cave.  You could feel the cool air rushing towards you as you headed down the stairs.

The cave was very family-friendly. The paths were paved, there were handrails in locations that needed them, and the cave was massive.  While this tour was not for the adventurous type, it was still enjoyable to walk around and see.  While the cave had plenty of spots where rocks were small enough to climb and sit on, don't be fooled into thinking you are allowed to do so.  They will absolutely threaten to call the authorities.

The tour ended with a tower of stairs to climb.  That might be the only difficult part of the tour.  They were also very steep, not like in these pictures.  For $12 a person, the tour was pretty nice. We stopped for dinner in Bowling Green and had some nice Thai food.  Overall, the trip was pretty fun for a day trip.  It was nice to get away!