One measure of a city's quality of life can be its connection to nature.

Right off Nashville Road, steps away from restaurants and retail, sits a 72 acre park, home to nature trails and a butterfly habitat.

It's almost its most well known attraction as an underground boat tour that lets you explore cave country from the water.

Our Laura Rogers has more from lost River cave.

Justin Jennings is CEO here at lost River cave.

Absolutely beautiful scenic grounds that you have here.

Tell us just in some of the activities that you offer at lost River cave.

So we have a lot to offer here at lost River cave.

Of course, we're known for our boat tours, but we do have 72 acres of park located right in the heart of Bowling Green.

We have a butterfly habitat that's open seasonally.

We call our butterflies the Gateway Bug.

If kids are generally kind of scared to interact with things like that, you can generally get them excited about a butterfly landing on them and kind of get them excited about entomology and things like that.

And then we have two miles of valley trails that people can walk, exercise, or just enjoy being back out in nature.

Our claim to fame, our most popular attraction here at the park, is definitely our boat tour right now.

Our new thing.

We're actually having movie nights down in the cavern nightclub, where our nightclub goers would come and dance and have a good time.

Yes, so much history here.

When people go down into that cave.

You mentioned it being a former nightclub.

There are stories that perhaps Jesse James even hit out in the cave on one of his eyes.

But this property, being as old as it is we've seen used by humans as far back as 11,000 years.

So we've had paleo Native Americans.

We had our nightclub, we've had various different milling operations.

This piece of property has always been a hub of activity for this area, this region, the milling operations used to provide grain.

We had lumber mills inside the cave.

Then the nightclub opened and it became a great place to, you know, make memories with loved ones and, and, friends.

So now today, we've cleaned the place up and families get to come out, enjoy nature, see a beautiful cave from a boat, and, just slow down in our fast paced world and walk through the woods and have a great time, which is so important and we know essential to quality of life and the educational opportunities that you provide here as well.

We know we're in cave country here in south central Kentucky.

People can better understand our systems when they come here, and also the importance of preserving our natural resources.

Well, when you have a system like this in the middle of the city, we're no stranger to flooding.

This is one of the lowest points for 55mi².

That is our our drainage basin that our cave receives the water from.

So, actually back in, April, the water where we're standing was actually about we would have been about 25ft deep at this point.

Oh my goodness.

The flooding that we saw this past spring has been record breaking.

It's a part of the growth of Bowling Green is Bowling Green gets bigger.

You have to have a larger capacity for stormwater because when you build a house, water can absorb into that land, can't absorb into the driveway.

You take out fields and trees and there's a surplus of water.

So it's got to go somewhere and we're seeing it more and more come to us.

Well, we are so glad that it's looking as good as it is today and that we're getting to enjoy it here today, because it is so beautiful and such a nice little peaceful escape from the rest of the city.

Yeah, I mean, people love it.

You hear it on tour every day when it's 90 plus outside, you turn the corner by the blue hole and you hear this audible gasp because you can feel the cave breathing that cool 57 degree air out.

So even when it's hot outside is so enjoyable down here, it's feeling good here.

Justin Jennings, CEO at lost River cave.

Thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, thank you.

And thank you, Laura.

Justin Jennings says lost River cave welcomes about 150,000 people a year to the park, including 80,000 guests on their underground boat tours.

Sounds like fun.