Cave City KY
Did the tour from the “historic” cave entrance – the natural one where the caves were first discovered. This is by far the grandest cave we have ever visited. Some sections are huge, even though we also walked through sections that were both narrow and one had to duck because the ceiling was at 3 ½ feet high, according to our guide. The tour involved 2 miles of walking underground, which covers a minuscule portion of the 420 mapped miles (and growing) of tunnels in the cave system. Most noteworthy is that the entire tour consisted of “dry caves” (no stalactites or stalagmites), due to the absence of water, resulting from a waterproof ceiling of shale and sandstone (whereas the caves themselves are in limestone). Even though the caverns are formed by water erosion, eventually the water breaks through and starts new caves at a lower level. Our tour went down three levels. According to the guide, the water table (the level at which the water flows like a river) is down on level five.
Claudette’s 2 Cents: We did two tours – The first one was Frozen Niagara Falls and the second was Mammoth Cave. Having gone to the ones in the Shenandoah Mountains, we were wondering how these would compare. They are both very pretty and different from Luray. I will say that several times, I had to mentally calm myself as some of the openings were NARROW, and I do mean NARROW – 3 feet in height by 1.5 feet in width.
After the tours, we drove around the area to see what else was going on. A lot of things were closed either because of Covid, because of the holiday season, or because of damages from the Tornado that passed here a few months before. The area isn’t very prosperous from what we’re seeing. Houses are very small, and many seem to lack any maintenance. There were hardly any towns to speak of. The roads are in disrepair and need work. We learned that the Corvette Assembly plant is nearby but was closed to be repurposed.
