I hadn’t heard of Mammoth Cave National Park until I was exploring the area around Nashville for interesting things to do. With more than 425 miles of officially explored caves, it is the longest cave system in the world and took hundreds of millions of years to form. And it’s just 90 minutes north of Nashville in Kentucky.
The self guided tour is accessed by foot directly from the visitor center. After a 5 minute descent, you enter the cave. The area between the entrance of the cave and the cave’s complete darkness is known as “twilight”. After that, you’re in the depths of the cave.
In addition to a self guided tour option, there are several guided tours of the caves that take you to completely different areas of the cave system. I decided to do both the self guided tour and the “Frozen Niagara” guided tour — and I’m glad I did! Both provided interesting and very different experiences.
