Cathedral Caverns – Cave Tour in Alabama
Cathedral Caverns may just be the coolest cave I’ve been to yet. Sure, we hit up Mammoth Cave National Park and that was nothing short of amazing, but the ‘bat cave’ in Cathedral Caverns just blew my mind away.
Check out this image of the ‘bat cave’ below that we posted on Instagram:
Yea, you won’t be seeing anything nearly that epic as far as stalagmites and stalactites in Mammoth Cave National Park. Well, who is to say…Mammoth Cave still hasn’t been fully mapped out yet! Based on the tours we hit up though, Cathedral Caverns is a must see when passing through northern Alabama.
CAVE TOUR INFO
For all information regarding prices/tour times/reservations -> CLICK HERE
The tour itself only lasts about an hour and a half and you walk about 1.5 miles round trip. This really isn’t a difficult cave tour at all as it is completely paved and has a lighted walkway to guide you through.
As you can see in our video at the top of this post, the tour guide was very informed and told us all sorts of neat and interesting facts throughout the known history of the cave. It was so awesome that Mr. Gurley (previous owner of the cave) actually took his military styled jeep through the cave in order to continue to explore and work on it.
BEST TIME TO VISIT
Although we have only visited once, we seemed to have picked a perfect time to visit Cathedral Caverns State Park. We literally hit up the very last tour of the day in late fall. There were maybe 10-15 of us total on the tour so we were able to ask questions and truly enjoy the peace and quiet that goes along within a cave. (Totally different experience than when we visited Mammoth Cave National Park).
The tour guide did say she had a group of 2nd graders earlier in that day, so I would suggest avoiding school days if you do want a bit more solitude. However, if you are taking your kids and don’t want to worry about being the loudest one there, by all means hit up the earlier times. 🙂
Not only did we get the tour mostly to ourselves, but the temperature inside the cave was the same as outside the cave. No need to wear jeans on a hot sunny day to layer up in the cave, you can literally just wear the exact same clothes inside and out comfortably.
FIVE THINGS TO LOOK FOR
1) Mr. Gurley’s jeep tracks near the bridge area.
2) Can’t miss it, but Goliath is the largest column within a cave in the world. This thing is HUGE.
3) Caveman and his Dog (tour guide will point it out)
4) Bat Cave (the best feature in this cave)
5) Prehistoric Shark’s teeth
NOTE FROM WRITER
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Also be sure to check out Deanna’s food blog when you get the chance! A lot of awesome and healthy recipes to use there!
Adventure On!
