Caving madness

We've arrived back in Canada after six weeks home in Kansas. The trip home was great, though I was a bit overwhelmed with everything that needed doing. I did get some of the outlets changed, though the overhead light in the kitchen thwarted my efforts to fix it as the old one was not installed properly. I'm not even certain as to how that house was put together the way it was in the first place as it is so much more difficult to do it improperly, though I suppose it is marginally cheaper to do it wrong, which is why I am stuck trying to put things right. Let me just say that it is easier to do it right from the start than to try to fix something done wrong.

Moving on. Justin and I have discovered a new hobby: caving. We both like to go into caves. Granted, the cushy tours we've been on are the camping equivelant of staying in the Hilton, but it is a start. We visited Meramec Caverns on the way to Kansas (beautiful formations, really cheesy tour complete with a video projection of a flag on 400,000 thousand year old flow formations) - see picture at left. Imagine a flag projected onto that. Sigh.

We also went down in Marvel Cave, the cave at Silver Dollar City. A word about Silver Dollar City - it is a lot more fun than it sounds. It is an amalgamation of a Renaissance Faire and a roller coaster amusement park. The theme is the 1880's, but they have crazy fun rides. They also have a cave, which I think was one of the reasons Silver Dollar City sprung up where it did.

Marvel Cave was much more "cavey" than Meramec was, though there were not very many formations. The initial descent is neat because you go down in a huge cavern that at one time held five inflated and floating one-person hot-air balloons. That is a big cavern! It also contained an enormous debris pile of stuff that had fallen through a sinkhole in the ceiling. I know it sounds sad that the most impressive part of the tour was a big pile of debris, but I am telling you, it was a BIG pile of debris... like four stories high from the base. There were also a lot of crawly spots where you really had to slip by narrow places. When entering the waiting line for the cave, you have to crawl through a cut-out of the narrowest passage, just to make sure you fit before they let you down in the cave. I would definitely NOT want to get stuck in a narrow passage of a cave if I were of the physical type that needed to worry about narrowness. Marvel Cave is Justin's favorite, but for me, it placed second to...

Fisher Cave! Fisher Cave (see right) was our original destination on the way out to Kansas, but because Fisher Cave is in Meramec National Park, we got confused and went to Meramec Caverns instead (which was okay, really. Meramec Caverns was a good starter cave for me). Fisher Cave is a much more cavey cave than the others since there are a lot of crawly places and the cave has not been fitted with permanent lighting as the previous two were. Instead, all those on the tour carried these extraordinarily shitty flashlights, half of which ceased to function about 3/4 of the way through the tour. I did have my emergency pocket light though, so I wasn't too worried. Still, they need to get better lights. Now, both Meramec and Marvel caves were "well-developed" in that they had a lot of cheese souvenir stuff around them including ATMs. We assumed Fisher would be the same way, so we traversed these crazy-wind-y backroads through the park to the cave which was... just a cave. It was a gated cave with a little information board. There was the park ranger tour guide with a coinbox to take your $6 (very cheap for a cave of this quality). Justin and I didn't have any currency on us, since we assumed there would be an ATM. However, I did have all my US change in a box in the car - US change amassed in Canada whenever I got US change instead of Canadian. Justin actually had about $4 on him (one dollar bill and $3 in quarters) and so I got into the changebox (not having enough time to drive out of the park and get money before the last tour left) and managed to find $8 in change. The tour guide was amazed we had that much change in the car. I explained I was actually doing a service to the US by bringing it back from Canada.

The cave itself was awesome, my favorite by far. Also a terrifically good glutial workout. The formations were incredible, though the tour was a little spoiled by this huge family of rednecks, who were extremely irritating. The lights going out were irritating too since the dim light prevented me from seeing some of the formations. But overall, very nice. The cave offers longer tours, though some special equipment is required such as three light sources, caving boots, and a helmet. Justin and I will go eventually. Our next stop, I think, might be Crystal Cave in northern Ohio, or we'll tackle Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We're thinking of getting a tent.