Tourist Spelunking

Well, finally here is the next post...whew that took me a while to get to it. Anyway, while Joy and Macy were here we decided it would be fun to visit a local cave for some spelunking adventure. We drove out south of us in lava flow country, parked and got out our lunch. We haven't had a picnic together in quite a while, and it was fun and made us wonder why we don't do it more often. Simple good food, sunlight on the pine trees and family...a great mix.

The insurance man  took an afternoon off and we were all glad he was with us.
The cave we went to is called Lava River Cave, and it is a large lava tube running underneath Highway 97, and was originally found in the 1930's. Today it's a tourist attraction. Back in the day that we were raising our three girls, we investigated this cave, as well as three other local caves. Some were flat, some rocky and all adventurous. So now it's the granddaughters' turn to do a little cave exploration.

We look prepared, with jackets, gloves, headlamps, a walking stick for me, and smiles!

 On our way....

Nice to have ramps over the rocks as you descend.

 It's quite a ways down into the cave, and it's an even 42 degrees all year round. 

There were several informative signs along the way which was helpful. When Macy started she was hanging back and wouldn't let go of her mother's hand. By the middle, she was running ahead of all of us, and telling us to hurry up! We had a fun few minutes when we turned off all our lights, and actually FELT darkness. Macy was OK with that, because there really were no living things in the cave (besides people). 
A fun time, and probably my last time, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.