We woke up in quiet, peaceful Cathedral Caverns State Park, and are happy to report the bathrooms received a thumbs up from each of us. After breakfast, prepared for a day of Cave Exploration and (for Tom) a business meeting with VideoRay folks.
In order to make sure we were back for Tom’s 3PM meeting, we decided to take the 12PM tour – advertised at 90 minutes. We had plenty of time before the tour to take a short 5 mile bike ride on roads and trails at the park.
While we were riding on a section of gravel road, we came across a nice man driving a Caterpillar D3 dozer smoothing off the sides of the road. He stopped to talk to us for a while and told us about his lengthy list of health problems (something old men do when they meet sometimes), but he was happy to be out on his dozer. The road turned a bit rough and we found several old hunting cabins that had not been used for years. We then turned around and headed for our campsite.
While waiting for our tour to begin at the very impressive opening to the cave, Tom wondered aloud if the apparently thin but long covering was entirely natural. As our tour began, Scott asked and we discovered that Cathedral Caverns is indeed natural and has an entrance measuring 25 feet (7.6 m) tall and 128 feet (39 m) wide, believed to be the world’s widest entrance to a commercial cave. The entire walk was advertised as 1.5 miles – and it certainly felt like it.
The cave is different than Ruby Falls in Chattanooga that we visited the last time we were in the area. Overall, Cathederal Caverns has mostly open chambers with only a few short narrow passageways connecting them. Cathederal Caverns is a well deserved name. It has several very impressive and elaborate formations, but they are perhaps less colorful than Ruby Falls (or maybe it was the lighting since Cathederal Caverns uses only white lights?). It’s kind of like the difference between visiting Notre Dame vs seeing a Renaissance painting (both impressive with the difference being granduer vs detail). The walk – faster and steeper at times than Scott would have preferred – gave his newly-replaced knees a workout.
Turns out the tour was all of 2 hours, but hey – we had an hour before Tom’s meeting. We drove back to Khan, did some chores, and Tom got ready 40 minutes before his 3PM meeting. However, Dean sent a text asking if Tom was joining and only then did Tom remember we were in Central Time. When he tried to get into the meeting it was over. It wasn’t a big deal and Dean filled in Tom later.
Tom proceeded to work on planning the next few campsites for the trip. Scott napped. Then we ate BBQ chicken hot off the grill and headed to bed.