Bowling Green to Louisville: Distance, drive time & road trip stops

The best stops on a Bowling Green to Louisville road trip are Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky Stonehenge and the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park. By car, the distance from Bowling Green to Louisville is 116 miles, with a 1h52m driving time.

Planning a Bowling Green to Louisville road trip itinerary

A Bowling Green to Louisville road trip is a drive through Kentucky that takes in a surprising number of impressive attractions along the way.

Top things to do in Bowling Green, Kentucky, include historic trolley tours, visiting the Train Museum and paying homage and the National Corvette Museum.

Good Louisville experiences include Old Louisville ghost tours, the Kentucky Derby Museum and a tasting tour of multiple bourbon distilleries. The food and history tours are also worth checking out.

Bowling Green to Louisville distance and driving time

By car, the distance from Bowling Green to Louisville is 116 miles. That makes for a driving time of around one hour and 52 minutes. The quickest route is along the I-65.

The best stops to add to a Bowling Green to Louisville road trip itinerary are Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky Stonehenge and the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park.

Bowling Green to Louisville road trip attractions: Mammoth Cave National Park

You can go to Mammoth Cave National Park for horse riding, hiking, camping and canoeing, but the caves are the key attraction.

The cave system in Mammoth Cave National Park is billed as the longest in the world. A bewildering range of cave tours is available, some of which are wheelchair friendly, with others more physical and aimed at cavers.

The classic Mammoth Cave tour is the two hour historic tour, which heads through underground tunnels that humans have used for thousands of years. Be warned, however – there are hundreds of steps.

Best stops between Bowling Green and Louisville: Kentucky Stonehenge

On the sillier end of the attraction scale, Kentucky Stonehenge in Munfordville is the work of local man Chester Fryer.

Fryer set about scouring the region for large rocks and created his own version of England’s Stonehenge with them. With the spares, he made a few more displays, including his take on the Garden of Gethsemane.

Bowling Green to Louisville drive: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park

The most revered US president of them all was born in a log cabin in rural Kentucky. The original log cabin no longer stands, but a replica is on the site at Sinking Spring Farm just south of Hogdenville.

It’s inside a grand, Beaux Arts memorial that looks absurdly out of place in the LaRue County countryside.

There’s also a visitor center at Sinking Spring, although the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park is spread over two sites. The second is at Knob Creek Farm, a few miles to the north. The Lincoln family moved here when Abe was a boy.

Louisville is the home of the Kentucky Derby.
Louisville is the home of the Kentucky Derby. Photo by USA-Reiseblogger/ Pixabay.

More Bowling Green road trips

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