Mystery Cave

One of Luke's goals this summer was to visit a cave.  He and Kieran had never been in a cave, while Lex had never been underground.  We finally got around to that goal by driving SE of Rochester to visit Forestville/Mystery Cave State Park yesterday.  I had been inside the cave, but on a much more rustic, 'flashlight' tour.  We took the scenic tour -- easy walking paths, with parts of the cave illuminated by dim lights and it lasts about an hour underground.  Lex isn't old enough yet for the other tours (flashlight, geology or wild caving).

All of the kids were excited....

We spent about 30 minutes or so before our tour learning about the cave itself.  All the kids listened to various stories about the cave that told it's history...

We learned how the cave formed and saw/touched fossils that are found in the rock that makes up the cave.  All the fossils are creatures who lived in an ocean...

We had planned on taking the 12:00 tour, so we decided to get some donuts as a little snack before the tour (we'd eat lunch afterwards), but the staff asked if we'd like to go on the 11:30 tour and we said yes.  That meant the kids had about 15 minutes to eat a donut or two...

The cave stays 48 degrees F, year-round, so we had to pull out the long-sleeves...the first stop was there for the naturalist to describe the rocks that make up the tour.  The kids are just to her right in the picture below....

We saw lots of cave structures like flowstone, stalagmites, stalactites, underground pools, etc.

Here's a fossilized cephalopod in the cave's ceiling....it's a relative of a squid or octopus...

Here's where the 'wild caving' tour takes off from, Luke was the only one willing to keep going on, but he didn't have a flashlight....

And the one decent picture of all three of them underground...

And the two selfies...

They don't exactly look like they don't want to hang out with me, huh?  There was a selfie with Kieran too, but we struggled to get it to turn out....

All the kids had fun and hope to take some of the other tours too in the future.  After the cave, we went hiking, but that'll be another post as this got long...