Mammoth Cave

Remember me mentioning our goal to visit all the national parks?

Well, we get to check another off the list!

Mammoth Cave is in centralish Kentucky and about a 4 hour drive from our house. Everyone was pretty stoked to be there when we arrived. There was much clapping, smiling,

and snuggling when we got out of the car.

We started our adventures by going on a short walk to Sand Cave.

William Floyd Collins was a famous explorer who was trying to find an alternate entrance into Mammoth Caves. He entered Sand Cave back in January 1925 and became trapped.

After 4 days of efforts to save Collins, the cave collapsed on him. It's a pretty tragic tale that got a ton of media attention back then.

This is as close to Sand Cave as you can get nowadays.

The walk to that cave was short with Avery beginning in her stroller,

transitioning to my hip,

and ending on Kyle's shoulders.

She leads a charmed life.

Once back to our car we drove to the visitor center for Mammoth Cave.

It's free to enter the park, but in order to actually be admitted into the caves you have to purchase a tour ticket.

Not knowing how our squirrely child would behave once in the caves, we decided to go with a "self guided tour" that allowed us to explore the first mile of the cave.

And here's the entrance! As soon as you step on these stairs you get blasted with cool air from the tunnel.

One of the early guides for Mammoth Cave called it a ""grand, gloomy and peculiar place."

It's the world's longest known cave system, with more than 390 miles explored.

And even if you combined both the second and third largest caves, there would still be more Mammoth Cave to see. 

I overheard a couple chatting while we were down there. The man responded to the woman, "No! It's named mammoth because it's a vast cave, not because of the animals that lived down here!" Hope she wasn't too disappointed!

It had several chambers that opened into HUGE rooms.

And although the rock is not naturally this color, we thought the pigmentation of the light gave a cool effect.

45 minutes later we ventured back out of the caves a little bit more cultured, a little bit cooler,

and a little bit wetter (this girl's mouth is like a faucet.)

Check out how green Kentucky is!

I mean, you could suffocate on all the oxygen produced out here!

Alright, so there are tons of hikes you can do on top of the caves. My family decided to explore "Cedar Sink"

Cedar Sink is a sink hole. 

And a sink hole is a depression in the earth's surface as a result of the dissolution of rock (pretty fancy shmancy explanation, no?).

Cedar Sink is known for having a river enter one side, and disappear underground on the other side. Cool, right?

Well, as you can tell, it was a pretty dry river that day and there was no water to witness.

But we did have a cute trail that led us along the edge of the sink hole.

Which led to awesome views of the outdoors.

And we were excited to have Avery try out her carrier pack for the first time.

The straps for keeping her shaded were entertaining...for 2 minutes...

and Kyle's hat was pretty fascinating...for about 30 seconds...

but neither of those perks could keep her in that backpack. Nothing competes with being on Daddy's shoulders.

Especially when his nose is just so pinchable.

You are a good man Kyle Bradley, a good man.

And that is Mammoth Cave National Park!