The day of caves

Today was fun! We stopped at Rock Bridge State Park just outside of Columbia and went on a short hike to a cave. We had originally planned to go their to check out a cave known as The Devil's Icebox, but we found out once we got there that it was only accessible by tour, which needed to be scheduled ahead of time. Luckily there was another cave right next to it that was open to the public, meaning we were free to explore it on our own. We followed signs to the cave, which involved a half-mile hike--mostly ascending--to the entrance. We had to walk down a couple flights of steps to get to the opening, and about halfway down the temperature plummeted. I felt like it dropped twenty degrees (probably more because it was so hot and humid out that day, and as far as I know, caves stay more or less the same temperature) in mere seconds.

At the bottom was a small opening where you had to duck to walk through where it opened to a pretty spacious, water-filled area that was illuminated by an opening in the rocks.

I took off my flip-flops to walk through the water. It was really cold. We walked in as far as we could go with just the light from our cell phones to guide us. We saw a bat!

It's a blurry picture because the lighting was so poor, but doesn't his shadow look neat?

We were disappointed that we hadn't come prepared to explore the entirety of the cave (our headlamps and waterproof footwear were buried with the rest of our camping gear in the car), but we enjoyed walking around there and under the natural rock bridge.

From there we drove about an hour south to the Ozark Caverns, where we got a private tour of the caves (private only because it was a Tuesday afternoon and no one else showed up). Unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures there because the park was trying to actively combat the spread of White Nose Syndrome, a relatively new and highly contagious fungal disease harmless to humans but lethal to bats. Since it is believed that our clothing and accessories can carry the spores from cave to cave, the tour guide forced me to lock my backpack in a safe before entering the cave, and Colin was asked to put his phone and keys in a ziplock bag in his pocket. Thus we have no pictures in the cave, which is really a shame because it was SO COOL.

We're heading back north now to our main route, hopefully camping somewhere in northwest Missouri tonight.

One last anecdote: I got a real taste of just how out of place this born-and-raised Jersey girl is out here in the Midwest today when we stopped to ask for directions to the caverns. I was driving and getting frustrated with the poor signage and our GPS's inability to maintain satellite reception, so I pulled into a gas station and got out to ask the woman behind the register for help. We were not too far from the highway at this point but I couldn't shake the feeling that we were pretty isolated from civilization as we know it. Sure enough, the nice lady told me to make my first left after "the gun club." I said, "The what?" And she repeated, "The gun club." Apparently everyone knows what this is unless you grew up in suburban New Jersey. So I got back in the car and told Colin we were turning left after the gun club. He nodded. I started driving again, and sure enough, after several miles of farmland and a few houses set back from the road (one had a swing set in the yard and I wondered where these kids might go to school and how long their bus ride must be), we came upon Missouri Trap Shooters Association, which looked like a series of huts where, Colin unpretentiously explained, people hang out and shoot their guns. Luckily I had Colin to serve as an interpreter so I didn't miss the left turn.