Caving

Yesterday, after church, we borrowed one of my daughters friends and we all headed out to Lava Beds National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/labe/   please ignore all of the evolutionary poppycock). We packed a picnic lunch and prepared for adventure.

After stopping at the Visitor's Center for our flashlights we ate out lunch under a juniper tree and picked our caves off the map. Our main criteria was being able to stand up. We don't crawl. And, thankfully, the caves with bat babies were closed to the public. We don't do bats either.

Skull Cave was our first pick. It is by far the coolest cave there (in more ways than one). It is absolutely HUGE. The ceiling is hundreds of feet above you. At the bottom is a year round pool of ice and no matter the outside temperature, it is only about 40 in the cave.

Here's everyone in the parking lot getting ready to go in

This is in the 'mouth' of Skull Cave

The Little Man and me at the bottom of Skull Cave

 

Big Brother

A close up of the ceiling

(how cool is that?)

Next we went to Merril Cave. A hundred years ago, locals used to ice skate by lantern light at the bottom of this cave. About  20 years ago the ice started to disappear and now there is none left. Still a very cool cave.

Daddy and The Little Man on their way to the cave

The girls

We did one more cave, Mushpot, before we ran out of time.  Everyone was tired, dirty and happy. The Little Man slept the whole way home. Today, my legs are SO sore from all those stairs . As my husband pointed out yesterday, as we were huffing and puffing our way back to the car, we used to be able to do that all day without tiring. Ah well, apparently those days are behind us. But the caves rock anyway.

Blessings.