Wednesday, July 11, 2012

To the Bat Cave...out of Necessity

Hey, it's Grace. Yesterday was a pretty awesome day. If you read our last blog then you know we took a trip to Laurel Caverns. We originally planned to take a harder tour, but weren't able to. So my dad and I decided to take a daddy/daughter trip for the lower caving tour. We had 2 chances to do this. We could go at 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock. I woke up at 9:40am though, making the 10'clock tour fairly impossible. Sorry, I like to sleep.

So to pass the time, I went fishing with my brother. We only caught a bluegill, but it was fun. When we came home I did what I do best; I read a book. Finally we were ready to go. We had to wear jeans and old clothes because the lower caving was supposed to be pretty dirty. I also brought a jacket because the caves are always 52 degrees. When we got there, we had to go into a room with the rest of the tour. There were about 15 people in our group. Our tour guide was about 18 and we were only his 2nd tour.  We donned our hard hats and our headlamps and were ready to go.  I was so excited!

The first part of the tour you follow the family tour path, but then you exit  to a dark room. If we didn't have our lights along we wouldn't have been able to see our hands in front of our faces.

The tour wasn't a huge sightseeing attraction, but it was a fun hike. It was cool because everybody was helping everybody. There was one girl who was the tour guides younger sister, and another boy who was the tour guides cousin who I pretty much followed the whole way; more on that later.

I don't know if I have this in the right order, but I do remember some specific places among the tour. The water was called the fish because the rock was shaped like a fish. Supposedly you should go over the fishes tail because it was good luck, but that way was harder so my dad just went with the bad luck and went across the head.There was also another part called the chimney climb. There you had to sort of press your butt against the one wall and your feet against the other; unless you were a twelve year old girl! I was able to just monkey my way up instead. There was also this area where the tour guide had us turn off all our lights and walked up in the pure dark. It was pretty cool, but we had to sneak a look at one place because I kept running into this wall. We soon realized there was a turn. Blonde moment!

It was also cool to see all the graffiti which was just peoples names and the date. I found it hard to imagine how the people wrote some stuff on the roof. Today, you are not allowed to write in the cave. The tour was even more fun because the guys I followed picked all the hardest lines.  We also followed a stream the whole way. It was also interesting that even though the cave was 52 degrees everybody was sweating. It was so much fun!. I love climbing and ducking under rocks! It was great! I bet I could be a tour guide there too, if I had any sense of direction.

When we got out of the cave at 5 o'clock we were exhausted. We came home and got dinner.  Mom made  tacos. We then went to Fort Necessity, but it was closed. We drove through the area and my mom read about the battle from a website.  It was during the French and Indian War which was before the Revolutionary War.  George Washington lead the battle for the British and he was only 21 or so.

Afterwards we went for ice cream and it was amazing! This place served soft ice cream, but it was funky flavored. For instance I got maple nut flavored and it was so good. The ice cream was so light and airy. The day was amazing and I had so much fun.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Grace. Reading about the cave was fun since you had to do all the work and I just get to sit here and do what you do best -- "read". But I would rather have tasted the ice cream with you than read about it.

    Uncle Toot

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