Making Good Choices

If you woke up to a beautiful sunny Sunday morning in January that was predicted to be in the mid fifties all day, what would you do?  What if on that same morning your sinuses felt like they were blocked up with cinder blocks and your head felt as if were solidly encased inside of a fishbowl?  What would you do then?

If you answered go to the lake then we are on the same page!

We were not going to pass up this opportunity for anything, so we packed up the canoes and a bit of lunch and headed out.

Do you see the heron?

The moon watching over us.

Such a glorious float it was, with the sun so bright that most of the time I could not really even see what I was taking pictures of!

Then it happened.  Over to one shore we saw a dark slit in the rock wall.  Could this be what we've been searching for for months?  We parked the canoes and went to investigate.

It sure looks like the real thing!

Barbara's Dome

A small curtain

Joseph's Dome

Flowstone

A 'hornet's nest'

Wow! Our own cave!!!  The boys decided to investigate the roof of the cave to see what they might find.

We climbed the side of the bluff...

And found another opening!

More popcorn

And anastamoses!!! (my favorites)

The caves were immaculate, no names carved into the walls, no soot from candles, and most of the small amount of trash seemed to be left there by floods rather than people. Both caves had more passageways, some requiring belly crawls, others that we could probably manage standing tall, but as we were equipped with nothing more than a small hand held flashlight, no helmets or pads and no plan for keeping track of where we were in the passageways, we opted to leave further investigation for another day.  Our time at the great Mammoth Cave taught us well what to do and not do in a cave.  We felt a bit like the little girl who chases the butterfly into the forest until she becomes lost, and not wanting to turn such a beautiful day into a tragedy we got back into our canoes and left.

There was more paddling, and more hiking to be done.

Hoping for more cave entrances

But not wanting to end up like this poor guy.

All day while we were on the water and in the caves my congestion was miraculously cured (though my sinuses made up for it that night).  What do you think?  A good choice?