Day 29-Mammoth Cave-Lincoln's Early Homes

 It rained very hard from midnight on and was still coming down when we woke up, but if you're going to visit a cave, rain isn't a problem.  

We slept late, 8:00 AM for us, and had a leisurely breakfast, so we didn't leave the campground until after 10 AM and arrived at Mammoth Cave National Park around 11:00 AM.  We were shocked how crowded it was.   Visiting a cave was the best place to be if it's raining, and it was a weekend, so we shouldn't have been surprised.  

There are 460 miles of mapped routes through this cave, and they anticipate there are 600 more miles yet to be explored, making Mammoth the biggest cave system in the world.  Archeologists have determined that Native Americans utilized the caves over 4500 years ago.

We had to take a ferry over the Green River to get to the park, saving about 30 miles of driving!

The Green River

In order to avoid crowds such as this we opted for a self guided tour...nor did we want to wait for hours for the first available spots in the guided tours.

Much less crowded!

We were surprised how big the caves were in comparison to Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota which we visited several years ago.  Mammoth Caves does have stalagtites and stalagmites, but the self guided tour doesn't send you down those sections.

Our self guided tour covered about two miles, so it was lunch time when we returned to surface, and it was now sunny, so we grabbed hotdogs for lunch at the Visitors' Center before heading to our next destinations, the birthplace and early boyhood home of Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln family when Abraham was born. His older sister was Sarah.

This is a replica of the 18' x 16',  one room long cabin built by Lincoln's father.  This replica is house in this Greek style building which can only be reached by climbing 56 steps, one for each year of Lincoln's life.

The Lincoln family only lived here for two years before being forced to move due to a title dispute.  This memorial was built during Teddy Roosevelt's term.

The Lincoln home along the Knob Creek was not much bigger than their first, and after five years they had to abandon this home as well, again due to a title dispute.

Our drive back to our campground was took us through some beautiful farm country. Several times we passed Amish families in their one horse powered buggies.

Sorry Noah, this is not a very vegan friendly area!

Yikes!  

Returning to our campsite around 4:30 PM, we were able to enjoy the sun and the lake.