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Situated just a few minutes drive from Mammoth Cave National Park, Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park offers campers of all experience and comfort levels an opportunity for a great family vacation.
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Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Campground
Located just off the Cave City exit on Interstate 65, the Kentucky Jellystone Park offers campers a wide variety of activities and camping options. You can choose to camp primitively in a tent, in an RV, or a luxurious cabin in the woods.
Activities abound at Jellystone. Pedal cars, foam ball tournaments (like paintball but with foam balls), swimming, mini-golf, parks, hay rides with Yogi, gem mining, and so much more.
Jellystone offers a trading post with Jellystone souvenirs, s’mores supplies, basic groceries, and RV equipment. They also have a great restaurant in the trading post, located just off the swimming hole area.
Let’s talk in a little more detail about our hosted experience at Jellystone in Cave City.
Jellystone Accommodations
We stayed in a beautiful, 2 bedroom, one bath cabin at Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Campground. Jellystone offers many different styles of cabins with similar accommodations.
Our cabin had a nice dining area, full kitchen (including full size refrigerator), TV, fireplace, sofa, master bedroom with a queen bed, and a second room with two bunk beds.
One of our favorite areas of the cabin was the screened in front porch with rocking chairs. We enjoyed our morning coffee out on the porch and watch the sun set from the porch in the evening. It was wonderful.
Overall, it was a great place to stay for our long weekend vacation. Some parts of the cabin were a little tight, but much better than camping in a tent and with all the comforts of home.
Jellystone Activities
I could go on and on about all the fun activities at Jellystone. They seem endless. Let’s talk about some of our favorites.
Gem Mining
The whole family had a great time mining for treasures at the Karst Beach Mining Company.
As the water comes out of the sluice, miners young and old sift through their bags of “dirt” to find the “gems” located within. We found shark’s teeth, gems, arrowheads, and much more. You’re pretty much guaranteed to find something. You may not be able to retire with your treasures, but we sure had a good time finding everything!
Pedal Cars
I think the kids would have raced the pedal cars the whole time we were at Jellystone, if you let them. These toys were a blast!
You pedal your “car” around a paved circle, racing family members along the way, of course. Some, like the tractor Hunter’s driving take a little more effort to pedal than others. All provide a fun filled activity for the whole family.
Hay Rides and Jellystone Characters
It was like 2019 at Jellystone with real character encounters with Yogi and Boo-Boo.
The best place to encounter Yogi Bear was on his evening hay ride. You get to sing along with Yogi and hang out with him for a bit after the ride. We loved it!
Foam Ball Wars
Similar to paint ball, the kids had a great time “shooting” mom and dad in the foam ball war arena. It was a lot of fun and wore everybody out.
The “gun” shoots foam stress balls that don’t hurt like a paintball. It didn’t cost anything and you had a great arena to play in with plenty of items to provide cover.
Of course, we had to do some traditional camping activities like making s’mores at the campfire. The best part? We didn’t even have to leave our cabin.
Mammoth Cave National Park
Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Campground is just a few minutes away from the Mammoth Cave National Park visitors center. So, of course, we had to visit this National Park.
Mammoth Cave is the world’s largest cave structure and you can only explore the caves on tours. We chose the Domes & Dripstones tour which takes you through the “new” section of Mammoth Cave. “New” because it wasn’t part of the original, historic Mammoth Cave, but it’s discovery still happened over 100 years ago.
We had a great time on the tour exploring tight spaces and big wide open rooms, including the grand finale, Frozen Niagara Falls.
Jellystone and Mammoth Caves
Staying at Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park Campground and visiting Mammoth Caves National Park made for a great family get-away from the hustle and bustle of city life.
The Campground provided enough relaxation and activities that we felt like we never needed to leave Jellystone for a great vacation.
We could not miss out on a National Park, though, so we did leave just long enough to explore the amazing Mammoth Cave.
It was a great family adventure. One we recommend to other families looking for an escape from the challenges and pace of the rat race to spend a little time with a couple of bears and their caves.