Excited for another fun summer full for the kiddos to enjoy the swings, slides, and the splash pad!…read moreAnd best yet it's all free! A small picnic area out front and an area you can eat in park next to it. Unfortunately the parking lot fills up fast and everyone has same idea to come so can get crowded!

Funtopia is a great playground area splash pad area located next to the waterpark. We visited here…read moreand we had great fun. They have remodeled and redone the playground in splash area so it is no longer the wooden play ground in some of these pictures. Now it is state of the art nice updated colorful playground material. The splash pad is also great we had a lot of fun

Awesome things to see here, you'll need a few days. The Rangers/tour guides I've met are all great,…read moreand the tours show you a lot. As an aside--I find it funny that they put a pair of restrooms down there, partway through one of the tours. I was not expecting that! (Not all tours have that, though, so be prepared.)

Who doesn't love a national park cave!? It's crazy as you wander thru here and they state they have…read moremapped out 400+ miles of pathways. I thought it was closer to freeway but you soon realize it's a bit of a trek. Plenty of parking. You can purchase the tour tickets on site or online. Facilities are nice but a good majority(if not all of them?) of the interactive museum features were 'not functioning' so just wander and read all the details and stories posted along the walls. It's crazy that the place was a tourist attraction way back in the day. You'd have to plan for being on the roads for probably days to get here. Tour was cool. Very pretty. Out ranger was super personable and seemed to love his job so that's nice. Glad we decided to drop by and check it out on our way back from Chattanooga.

We are visiting from out of town and searched Yelp for a playground close to our hotel. This is…read moreabout 3 miles from the interstate. There are some rocks to climb which my boys loved. There also is a very nice and accessible playground with things to climb on and instruments to play. There are lots of different structures to keep the kids entertained. There also are a few covered shelters for picnics. Very clean and safe.

Cute little park with basketball court, playground, and picnic areas. Connected to a golf course…read morebut does not appear to be a private park.

Sooo apparently I was right when I said this lake definitely has snakes (whenI saw kayaks on the…read morelake I was like that seems fun but bet it has snakes!!). I saw one swimming and it went right towards the guy's fishing line and attacked it as I predicted. For some reason he started to reel it in (I would have cut the line or waited and given him my rod if it started to climb the line). The snake "jumped" off the line and swam away under the bridge and into the dark part by the grass.....umm ok time for me to walk...fast....away. So be careful!

My family enjoys the park. They rent paddle boats, kayaks, and john boats by the hour. They have…read moreseveral great places to picnic. There is a nice walking path that weaves around the lake. I like the boat launch for kayaks. We bring our kayak and its a nice clean lake to paddle on.

We stopped at Onyx Cave on a total whim during our road trip and so glad we did. This was the…read moreperfect little adventure break, especially with kids. I have a 3 and 5 year old and they both LOVED it. It's short, sweet, and just enough "wow" without being overwhelming. The cave itself is really cool, with some tighter crevices that made it feel a little adventurous (my kids thought that was the best part), but nothing too difficult or strenuous. If you're worried about that--don't be. It's super manageable and moves at a good pace. Price-wise, it felt totally worth it for a family stop. They've also got a little gift shop at the end which my kids obviously needed to check out lol. If you're passing through, just stop. It's a fun, easy memory to make and doesn't take up your whole day. Would 100% do it again.

Super cute and quick cavern tour off the highway home to Cincinnati…read moreBelieve it to be family run and owned very knowledgeable about the caves and cave systems and how they came to be found child friendly, but some spots can get very claustrophobic

LOVED staying here!! We were here for 2 weeks and were never bored. Lots of history to see in the…read morearea. We even took a day trip to Cumberland Falls- a 1 1/2 hr drive- but didn't seem like it at all. Staff was very helpful and friendly. Showers and bathrooms were immaculate! The grounds were mowed and kept up well. There's a very nice boat launch right next to the campground. The beach was closed but it is early in the year. There's a park next door with volleyball, picnic shelters etc. The lots are all a fairly good size with great views of Green River Lake Overall wonderful place to stay!!

The Green River is beautiful and this state park offers a great area for hiking, biking, and…read moreanything outdoors. We did one of hikes that goes right down to the lake, offering beautiful views. I would especially recommend coming here in the fall, when the leaves are changing colors. It's a great park!

We went for dinner at the lodge. By far the best fried catfish! And all you can eat at an amazing…read moreprice. The view is so peaceful. Love seeing the deer at dusk. One of our favorite lodges. The staff is so friendly, they truly make you feel at home. The rooms are comfortable, with a balcony to enjoy nature right outside your door. The grounds offer so much! Playground, golf, hiking trails and boat ramp activities for year round nature lovers. Say it again, one of our favorite places to visit.

Absolutely an amazing lake! Clean water and beautiful scenery. Everyone is very friendly. Great…read morefamily environment.

Diamond Caverns is in the vicinity of Mammoth Cave NP. What sets this place apart is the amount of…read morediverse formations you get to see on a 1-hour tour. Also, unlike the national park, Diamond Caverns is first-come first-served with no reservations. I just visited the area for the second time, this time we had a lot of family members including small children. We did the early morning Mammoth Cave beginner-level tour and then went straight over to Diamond Caverns for their tour. Everything else in the national park was sold out for the day, but we went straight onto a Diamond Cavern tour with no wait and a group of 14 of us. The tour guide was very patient with the bunch of small children in our group. Overall, I highly recommend Diamond Caverns if you are in the area and interested in taking an hour-long tour that includes a lot of steps to get up and down to/from the caverns. There is some neat local history included as well. There's a full gift shop with beverages and restrooms available on site. No food, drinks, or bags of any kind are allowed in the caverns.

My family planned months in advance to do a road trip and stay at Mammoth Cave NP. Unfortunately…read morethe federal government shut down just before we made our visit. When looking for things to do in lieu of MCNP we ended up at Diamond Caverns. It was ok. We'd been to Carlsbad Caverns recently so this was very underwhelming. 4 stars because the staff was great. The tour guide had her script nailed and she was passionate about working there. Large gift shop. My kids loved it and sometimes at the end of the day that's all that matters.

Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace is one of the smaller sights managed by the National Park Service but…read moreI highly recommend it. The administration building has a lot of historical facts about President Lincoln that are very interesting! The memorial building contains a log cabin similar to what President Lincoln was born in. There are many steps up to the memorial, but this memorial is handicap accessible if you take the ramp feature to the right of the administrative building! It's a short trip from Bowling Green, where I stayed and I highly recommend it. To the left adjacent to memorial is a building named Nancy Lincoln Inn but it is on private property and you cannot visit it. There is a marker for it though! I would highly recommend. It's a great memorial to arguably one of our best presidents!

Honestly? Abe deserves better, but it just doesn't seem like there's enough material to work with…read morehere, which may not necessarily be anyone's fault. My top-tier chum who literally went to the school of hospitality and I came by here last Thursday in the late morning at my request. I love presidential shizzle - one of my earliest memories is getting a book of the presidents and learning all of them in order, and instead of going to Disney World (don't get me started), my parents took me to a number of presidential homesteads and birthplaces when I was in elementary school, mostly the heavy hitters in VA and the Adams one in Braintree, MA. And I've legitimately celebrated President's Day by dragging some of my chums to Grant's Tomb at 9AM to listen to a reenactment of the 1873 State of the Union. So I came into this with some nerdy, executive branch street cred. Part of it was definitely the mediocre rainy weather, but I just wasn't that impressed. I want to emphasize that there might not have been anything the National Park Service could have done once they got involved, because the biggest issue here is that the actual birthplace doesn't really exist anymore. I'm sure they got the land/property lines correct, but the log cabin that we all naturally associate with Abe? Gone, so you have to settle for a recreation, and that recreated cabin isn't given its own space outside - it's housed in the Memorial Building, which makes that experience more claustrophobic than it should be, since the cabin takes up about 70% of the room. There may be excellent reasons why it had to remain indoors, but I found that decision pretty curious. And bottom line - it's hard to have a national park based on a birthplace that's largely abstract and not something you can see with your own eyes. The Visitors Center was relatively small but pleasant. I haven't stopped to think about it until now, but I'm guessing that the vast majority of Lincoln exhibits are at his home in Springfield, IL, which I know DOES physically exist. Again, they just didn't have as much to play around with here so they're relying more on fancy/tasteful Lincoln quotes on their walls versus, say, a glass case featuring his top hat. When a sizeable chunk of your Visitors Center is taken up by a gift shop and little movie theater showing a 15-minute video about Lincoln, you're pretty much broadcasting the fact that you don't have a lot of standalone items to display, which is a shame. The biggest selling point is the Memorial Building, notwithstanding the replica cabin situation inside. It's built up on a hill with 56 steps for each year of Abe's life, and bares a pretty strong resemblance to the more notable Presidential memorials in DC. I thought it was cool that several Presidents have stopped by, now knowing that this is a bit in the middle of nowhere, but it's also just an hour outside Lexington so it was also disappointing to learn that no Presidents have visited since Eisenhower. They can't fit in a 15-minute photo op over the course of four to eight years? Come on. It's Abe. The NPS rangers (right word?) were very nice. I'd be curious what the pecking order of historic sites is for the NPS but I have to think this isn't at the very tippy top. Regardless, lots of smiles and at least one of them went out of their way to ask us if we had any questions and to (unprompted) pull out a map to orient us before we left the Visitors Center to explore the grounds a bit. If you're in the area, sure, pay your respects to the beginning of Honest Abe's story. But if you have more time/bandwidth, I think the play is to jump ahead in the timeline and get yourself up to Illinois.

We had a great time at Crystal onyx cave! Great to experience a cave- easy walk and super kid…read morefriendly. Our guide, Aaron, did a great job and was very warm and engaging. No issue getting a tour and it was only our 5 and one other family. Definitely recommend. Great way to avoid the crowds of mammoth cave and still be able to explore the area and trails!

We opted to do this private tour rather than the cave tours at Mammoth. We've done a bunch of…read morethese all over the country and the folks at the campground highly recommend Crystal Onyx Cave. We got lucky and we were the only 2 people in our tour! Charolay was a hoot and also a wealth of information. We got to take our time and ask lots of questions. Note there are 2 tours: Upper cave (we did this one) and lower cave. I'm not sure if you choose or the tour guide chooses. Either way you won't be disappointed. It's a great experience and I recommend stopping here if you're in the area.