Take a day trip and explore Kentucky’s only underground boat cave tour

Welcome back to eat, play, stay. We're exploring Bowling Green, Kentucky, *** beautifully curated collection of cool cars and good eats. Now we go from eating lamb to being on the lamb. There's *** rumor, Jesse James once hid out in this cave. Let's go get some answers. Becky Madison is *** guide at lost River Cave. Kentucky's only underground boat cave tour after some civil war soldiers disappeared while swimming here, an engineer with *** rock and some rope was brought in to investigate. He threw the rock into the hole. The rope followed and was fed into the hole as they kept feeding into the hole and going deeper and deeper. Finally, it came to *** stop when he pulled the rope out, he measured it to be 437 ft deep. Now where the water pops up to the entrance of the cave is 400 ft to give you an idea of just how deep 400 ft really is. Go to the store and buy 400 ft long hot dogs, lay them down, end to end on your sidewalk in your neighborhood. Now you'll have to work quickly before your neighbor's be picks up the scent. If he does, you'll only have about 30 seconds to lay all those wieners down. I recommend you get some extra hot dogs. Anyways. Good luck. So, our claim to fame is the shortest, deepest river in the world. The only river that is deeper than it is. Long boat tours began in 1998 and they continue today. Well, to clarify, they only last about 45 minutes. There aren't still people riding around on *** boat tour that started in 1998. You got that right. *** portion of the tour is *** walk along the valley towards the entrance of the cave. Your tour guide will actually take you um down to board the boat. As you enter into the cave, you will go underneath *** low hanging rock. This is locally known as the wish and rock because once you hit your head, you're gonna wish you didn't, you'll duck down and once you pop out in about 15 seconds, you'll be in the wide open cavern where you'll see the flow stones, cave, bacon, stalactites, cave, popcorn, cave, popcorn, cave, bacon. I'll take any tour that involves bacon. Cave, bacon is pretty much like cave drapery. It's where the water has flowed through and left behind layers of limestone and as it does so as light shines through it, it's like *** translucent color, kind of looks like bacon before it's fried so we could fry it up and eat it. No, you can't eat cave bacon or cave popcorn. It'll break your teeth and our hearts. Becky and our hearts. So I guess we'll be bringing our own stacks into the cave. If we get lost, you cannot get lost in the cave. There is *** legend that Jesse James actually hid out in our cave after he robbed *** bank in Russellville, Kentucky. Well, Jesse James was inside the cave. The Pinkerton detective agency was outside the cave, finally got him in an area they thought they could catch him. But what they did not know is that there are additional exits out of the cave that they could have taken to evade capture by the law. Now, we couldn't verify this story. But what we do know for 100% certain is that in 1985 chunk Mikey mouth and data went into *** cave to search for one eyed Willie's treasure. This is also true. They say if you stare into the depths of the lost river long enough that you'll see the reflection of your future spouse. My advice is you better like who you're standing by? Ok. This really, really, really is true. When you spend money at lost River Cave, you're also supporting its preservation for future generations. It's also *** great getaway on *** hot summer day.