XYZZY
Allen September 26th, 2004
Well, we all made it back from our cave adventure.
Now for the details…
We spent Friday and Saturday night at Alabaster Caverns. This is a cave complex where the local rock is gypsum — used in home construction as sheet rock. As water seeps through and over the gypsum, it slowly become alabaster. The main cave is undergoing lighting renovations and will be available for tours starting in early November.
This area of Oklahoma is high plains with some mountains — these mountains shoot up approximately 500 feet above the plains that surround them.
Once we arrived, the Scouts in our patrol camped out, er in, the Water Cave. It is a shallow cave that holds approximately 15 Scouts (and a couple of bats) with a small waterfall at the back of the cave.
Saturday we explored some caves on our own (also called wild caving). You must register with the ranger before you enter a cave and again when you leave.
Of the four caves available, we explored Bear Cave and Owl Cave. We made an aborted attempt to explore Ice Stalactite cave, but ran out of time.
Bear Cave
Bear Cave is the furthest from the ranger’s headquarters and is framed by a 20 foot wide, 5 foot tall entrance. The rocks at the entrance are rather slippery, but that soon gave way to mud. Note to self: never think to yourself, well it will probably be better once we get inside. Although you can explore the entire length of this 800 foot long cave if you so desire, we stopped after 400 feet. We came to a 2 foot opening that required we crawl along the passage on our stomachs. While some younger Scouts were all ready for this, the older Scouts and adults realized we were just getting started on the day and didn’t wish to squish for the rest of the day.
We met another Scout Troop coming in who were determined to forge ahead where we turned back. They followed us back out some time later after examining the situation in detail.
Owl Cave
The entrance to this cave is much more impressive than Bear Cave — measuring some 30 feet wide by 25 feet tall. This cave is shorter — measuring some 500 feet in length — and is an in-and-back cave. The cave finally terminates (after one 2 foot wide passage) with an underground stream.
The local bat population entertained us Saturday night with displays of acrobatics. We probably saw 150-200 bats.
Long drive back to Norman today, so I’m ready to hit the bed and have a nice nights sleep.
And, no, I didn’t have to invoke the magic word.
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