We went to see one of our few remaining points of interests, or “tourist traps”, as Gary calls them.  I was hopeful that this one would be really cool.  It had high marks on TripAdvisor.  So we made the trek to see the caves.  We we almost there when the British Lady on our Garmin had us pull into a new housing development.  I thought for sure the many times we have dropped her on her head had finally effected her directional output but nope, she guided us right to the parking lot of the caves.

Here we are!

This place also had a campground within sight and it was pretty full.  When we got out of the van, we noticed there was no one else around so we moseyed on into the gift shop where they were selling tickets.  OOOOOOOO!  So many trinkets!  I’ll have to control my self ;).  We bought our tickets and as there weren’t any other people there we got a private tour.  From the get go I could tell this cave had more “live” stalactites and stalagmites in it than Ruby falls.  

This whole cave system is about 5 1/2 miles long.  They have two tours, one is the walking tour that we took and they also offer a Wild Cave Expedition which can be from 2 hours to an over night stay.  I don’t know, looked pretty wet in there to be laying your sleeping bag down.  If you went on one of those tours, they borrowed you gloves, knee pads and a hard hat with a light on it. Yuk, who wants to put on a pair of old sweaty knee pads someone else has worn, not to mention a hard hat!  Needless to say, Gary and I passed on that tour.  Not because we couldn’t do it if we really wanted to….I just didn’t want to wear those sweaty knee pads ;).

So we started our tour down the nice safe path and the first thing we run into is WILDLIFE!  A salamander!  Gross little things, they better not drop on me while I’m walking.

Salamander

Our guide pointed out these “scabs”on the ceiling

Scab on the ceiling

No one has ever seen them fall, but when they do, the ceiling is left looking like this

Scab has fallen off

This is the only formation that they will actually see come together.

Next 5 years

It will happen within the next 5 years or so.  The next earliest one will take 90 years.

Then the guide pointed out this formation

Biggest formation in the cave

They thought it was the oldest formation but it turns out it is not the oldest, but it is the biggest one in the cave.

Then we saw these round indentations on the ceiling

Whirlpools

These are caused by the water creating a whirlpool as it comes out of the ceiling and spinning these holes in the limestone ceiling.

Big Boulder

They had quite a few big boulders in the “main” room.  They fell from the ceiling.  Good thing none fell while we were in there :).  They had some pools in the cave

Pool of Water

and the guy told us how they tell the visitors not to throw money in the pools.   How a few years ago they cleaned out all the money people had thrown in there and now they were waiting for the pools to naturally clean themselves out in hopes the salamanders would lay their eggs in the pools.  But you still have those people who think the rules don’t apply to them so they are throwing their coins in the pools.  Some people’s kids!

By the time the tour was done, it was just a little over 1/2 an hour, and cost us $32.67.  Gary thought Ruby Falls was better, I thought this one was better.  Maybe you should go to both and you can decide.