Journey to the Center of the Earth..and Mini Golf

VIEW OUTSIDE THE  CAVERN

Hey, it's Grace again. So for the 4th of July we decided to go to Laurel Caverns. I was really excited because I had done a school report on Laurel Caverns and I wanted to actually see it. Before we even got into the cave I was amazed. The view from the parking lot was amazing. You could see for miles and miles.

hall of kings

 When we got to the building to buy our tickets we planned on doing one of the harder tours, but it turned out Camden and Lauryl weren't old enough. Instead we decided to take the family tour which was an hour instead of three. The first thing we noticed entering the cave was the temperature dropped. The cave is always 52 degrees no matter what the weather is outside. The first room the tour guide took us to was called the hall of the kings. The tour guide pointed to the ceiling and showed us what looked like an alligator on the roof of the cave. He told us how other explorers used symbols like this to find their way through the caves.

MINI GOLF CAVER

Another place in the cave had lights that were activated by sound. So while everybody else was going through making a lot of noise to keep the lights on, my dad and I stayed back and went through in the dark. It was great! We also went up this really steep hill. Halfway up the hill the tour guide stopped. There was a railing and the upper end was shorter then the lower end making it slanted. The tour guide rolled a golf ball along the railing but instead of going down the one end it rolled up the railing. The tour guide explained that it was an optical illusion because there are no reference points in a cave.  When we finished the tour we decided to do the caverns mini golf. It was pretty lame, but we all had fun.

When we got home we swam for most of the day. My mom had bought Lauryl and I glow sticks and Camden a glow gun to celebrate the 4th. We were going to go watch the fireworks in Nemicolin, a nearby resort, but we would have had to sit in our cars along the road to watch them.  Instead, we decided to watch them from the pool since it was a late night swim. 

Camden decided to play basketball with some older kids and I joined in. I tripped over my feet and skinned my knee, but my team won. After the basketball game, we went swimming. Lauryl's glow stick broke and squirted her in the eye. After flushing it with some water she was fine! We swam for the rest of the night and watched fireworks over the trees. It was the best fourth of July ever!