Florida Caverns

On our way home from the beach we stopped at Florida Caverns and took a cave tour. I love this sort of thing. Our nearly hour long tour sped by. There was so much to see and it was so interesting. Even the little boys didn't seem to tire of it until right at the end after we exited the cave, at which point Daniel refused to move anymore (for about five minutes) and Nate had a major meltdown since I wouldn't buy him a stuffed dog at the gift shop. It's so hard to be a kid sometimes.

 

Here are Daniel and Seth descending the steps to the cave entrance.

Cool tiered formation in the first chamber of the cave.

Cave bacon. Mmmm. Bacon.

"Wedding Cake" formation in the Bridal Chamber or Wedding Room of the Caverns.

 

Not sure what the name of this formation was but we thought it looked like the Tower of Babel.

"Rock of Many Names", so called because of all the different names people who have tripped over it have christened it with.  I hit my head on the stalactite above it as I was avoiding tripping over it. Ouch.

Pretty castle-like formation.

View of the chamber we had just exited through a window in the rock.

Cave ceiling near the exit of the cave.

Another shot of the cave ceiling in a different spot near the exit.

There were all kinds of interesting formations--stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, flow stone, cave curtains (another name for the cave bacon) and others that I don't remember. We also learned a lot about the Civilian Conservation Corp which worked to preserve the cave and make it accessible to the public in the 1930s.

Taking a breather while the tour guide talked about some of the work that the CCC did on the cave.

Family Portrait inside the cave.

Moss covered boulders at the cave's exit.

Bracket fungus.

Path back to civilization.

Nate before his meltdown.

A leaf that Daniel found and stuck in a hole in a rock.

After our tour we walked back to the parking lot and had a picnic lunch before giving hugs goodbye to my sister, brother-in-law and nieces and heading back to Auburn. The weather was a little bit fall-like which made the ride home in our un-air-conditioned car tolerable.
It was a lovely and fitting way to celebrate Labor Day, especially with all that we learned about the CCC.

Boys posing with a statue of a CCC worker.