Trail to the cavern entrance. Arrow points to trail with people hiking on it and circle is around the approximate cave entrance. It's about a 3/4 mile hike, climbing 300 feet in elevation.
There's my son starting off the hike. Of course, he ran up part of the way! I huffed & puffed in the high altitude and slowly made my way up.
My son at the entrance.
My son and his Grandpa!
Me & hubby!
Let's head through the tunnel!
Looking through broken stalactites as we head down.
Stairs chiseled into the cave.
Me & my son climbing through (with lame facial expressions!) - you have to bend over in half in so many places!
Down some more. Upper right of the pic has some formations in the dark.
Watch your head! My Dad bumped his a few times - ouch!
Some pretty flowstone.
Me and my bright green purse managed to navigate just fine!
Down even more!!
Flash wouldn't show it, but there's a pool waaaaaayyyyyy down at the bottom of the dark hole.
Spectacular, isn't it?! OK, I couldn't resist - this is just black. But when you get into the heart of the cave, they show you what it was like for the workers if their candles went out. They turn out all lights and you CANNOT see your hand in front of your face even if it touches your nose. I think they call it natural total darkness?
Some colored flowstone.
The color comes from minerals in the water. This formation is called the Brown Waterfall.
Now we are climbing up. Looks like some cave popcorn.
Can't remember how these form, but don't they look interesting?
Though we are inside a cave, we are at a mile high in elevation.
Up stairs into the final room. Try to see some of those formations in the dark - fantastic!
Part of the ceiling.
One of the columns.
Coming out of the fabulous final room.
The tunnel out.
We were so surprised to walk out into hail!! Good thing it wasn't any bigger or we could have been hurt! My dad's head did get hit and was stinging, but the rest of us just felt a few little hits. My son was so excited and was collecting the hail in his hand!
What is this doing here?? Well, after all that hiking and climbing, we had to go somewhere good for lunch! We headed to Wheat Montana - yum! We saved this caramel roll for breakfast the next day. That baby is easily 6 inches square or more, so we cut it into 6 pieces and it fed 3 of us quite easily!
Hope you enjoyed your tour today! Stop back here tomorrow for Chocolate Friday! Get your chocolate posts ready to link up!
