Mammoth Cave National Park - Frozen Niagara Tour

The next morning we were to do our third and final tour at Mammoth Cave. We were just chilling and relaxing after breakfast when my nephew JT said "oh we should probably get going." We checked the time and with a shock saw that our tour started in 30 minutes. And it was a 30 minute drive to the Visitor Center.

So we rushed to the park, driving as fast as possible on the rural roads. The tour we were going on that morning was the Frozen Niagara tour, and unlike the other tours this one requires a short ride on a bus to a different access point to the cave. When we finally arrived at the Visitor Center parking lot, we saw the last few members of our tour group boarding the bus. We hopped out of the car and ran, just as the bus started to drive away. We frantically waved, and amazingly the bus stopped for us. I hated being one of those people who was so late that we had to stop the bus, but I was thankful that we were able to jump on at the literal last second.

Mammoth Cave is known for its immense size, and not for cave formations. But one of the few places where formations like stalagmites and stalactites have formed is along the Frozen Niagara tour. It is one of the most popular tours in the park, and for good reason. It was definitely the most interesting tour that we did. Also it was a smaller tour group, so it didn't fell like you were being herded along with the crowd.



The tour soon empties out into a wide room filled with all sorts of formations, and even a little waterfall pouring out of a hole in the ceiling.



Then the tour follows a set of stairs that runs alongside and then beneath the tour's namesake formation - Frozen Niagara. The formation is named because it looks like a waterfall, frozen in stone. The formation is 43 feet wide and 70 feet tall, and is thought that it has been growing slowly for 800,000 years.



The stairs descend lower into the Drapery Room, where if you look up you see hundreds of delicate formations.



We then headed back up, and I turned around to get a view of looking back at the metal stairs as they run past Frozen Niagara.





Then the tour goes over a grated walkway that hangs 80 feet above a small natural pond called Crystal Lake. I'm sure the tour guides here have heard lots of Friday the 13th jokes here over the years.



As we made our way out, the tour guide stopped and asked "do you feel like you're being watched right now?" And then she shined a light on a bunch of cave crickets on the ceiling, just inches above our heads. It turns out that we had been walking right by and under hundreds of cave crickets the entire time. They looked like little aliens running around.



And then the tour ended. We made sure to make it back to the bus before it started driving away this time.