Summer Vacation - Fill-in days

Fill-in days while Grammy recovered

While we waited for Connie to get the okay to head home, I tried to do things with the girls while staying at my friend's house. Before my friend left on her own summer vacation, she took us to Holiday World, which back in my day was Santa Claus Land. It's much bigger now and mostly a water park, but the old Land of my day still has cheesy rides where you can get nice and sweaty before hitting the water park.

The girls enjoyed Holiday World. The next day my friend and her family left for their vacation, allowing us to stay behind in their home. It was beyond kind.

The weather in Evansville had hit the 100-degree mark, and so I decided to head somewhere cool. What better place than Indiana's caves?

Indiana has 100 caves that have been discovered. We went to Marengo Cave and signed up for the double tour, which took us through a 70 minute walking tour of one part of the cave and then a 40 minute tour on another part of the cave.

Marengo Cave was discovered by a girl and her brother. She overheard some school children talking about a sinkhole near the cemetery. She decided to investigate it before the other kids. She and her brother found the hole and went down into what they realized was a cave. It took them 3 days to tell the owner, and within a week he had it opened to the public. Ah, American Enterprise.

The tour we took was 200 feet below the ground. It was 52 degrees. (I had to spend $40 on sweatshirts for the girls before we entered....more enterprise) It was beautiful, and I got quite a lot of lovely photos with my new digital camera. The girls were very interested in both tours and retained most of what they learned. After the trips, we went gem mining, where we found surprisingly two bags full of precious gems that we will do nothing with if the bags should even make it home with us.

We ate lunch at a place where my mother used to take us as kids in Leavenworth, Indiana. The restaurant overlooks a beautiful part of the Ohio River and we watched barges with loads of coal pass by. We ate a home-cooked meal and then headed down the road to explore Wyandotte Cave. 

This is the cave where my mother was a guide in the late 50s, early 60's. It was right before closing, so we only got to take the small cave tour, but there were only five of us, and the guide was a good one and quite funny. His uncle used to work with Connie, so he was excited to meet me or to at least have heard about Connie.

This cave was quite different from Marengo. It was full of cute little furry bats in all shapes and sizes. Most were quietly hanging from the ceiling watching us, but occasionally we had them flying over our heads.

We also saw cave spiders, cave grasshoppers, which were very opaque, and a salamander. It was very wet and slippery, and there were bridges we had to cross where we could look down, down, down farther into the cave.

Wyandotte was discovered by two men rescuing their dog. The dog fell into a hole, and the cave was found during the rescue. (I probably would have just gotten a new dog) I'm fascinated by the findings of these people. Imagine discovering something like this while out wandering!

The tour lasted about thirty minutes, and we headed back to Evansville. I'm thinking next year I'll just start off with Indiana caving (maybe venture into some Kentucky caves) and do some canoeing down Blue River before going to the farm for the reunion.

Hey, maybe on the way back to Florida, I'll even stop into Nashville!