Spelunking!

I’m probably the only person who could think it a good idea to tour a cave in 5” stilettos.  First there’s the uneven floor, then there’s the drippy rain water and puddles, and of course, the low ceilings.  I thought about the floor, maybe the puddles a little bit.  I forgot about the ceilings.  But it wouldn’t have mattered if I had because you see….

This past week I spent a few days at a conference in French Lick, Indiana.  We finished about noon on Friday and I had plans to meet up with a friend in Indianapolis when he finished work about 5:30.  I was roughly two hours south of Indy, so I needed to find something to do for a bit.  I figured maybe I could bum around in Indy for awhile or whatever.

So here I was, driving along, and then I saw it.  A big sign for Marengo Cave.  Marengo Cave was in our first year Property text book.  The case was about who owned the cave: did it belong to the person who had the entrance, or did it belong to the several people who owned the land above the cave?  The court decided it was the later and the owner who had plenty of the cave under his property, but not the entrance, put up a big chain link fence across the inside of the cave.

As soon as I saw the sign, I thought, “ooh!  I’m going there!”  Daddy used to take us to lots of caves on vacations and I usually enjoyed them.  Quick right turn and I was on my way, over rolling hills, past farms and woods and off to the cave.

When I arrived, I checked with the lady at the counter about the ground inside the cave.  She assured me it was concrete.  I bought a ticket and wandered around the gift store and nearby area until the tour was ready to start.  I also went out to my car to change my shoes.  You see, since I had packed for the conference and not for spelunking, I only had 5” stilettos with me.  Four pairs of them.  Luckily, one of those four pairs was my favorite walking shoes.  Besides being super comfy, they’re also ok for puddles.  They’re vinyl, so they won’t get hurt by water.  And the little bit of a platform in the front keeps my toesies out of any water.

The cave was beautiful!  It was quite large and had a lot of really neat formations.  There were only 6 of us on the tour, and that’s if you count the toddler, so it was like a private tour.  Most of the others were experienced cave goers, touring the area specifically for the caves or part of some type of cave clubs.  They knew what kind of rocks they were looking at, what the different formations were and how things were formed.  I just knew what I was looking at was pretty and that I shouldn’t touch it.  

I wished Alfred was there.  Even though she might not know how things were formed or what they were called, she’d be able to tell me about the rocks and how the rocks themselves were formed.

The tour guide also told us about earthquakes.  I had no idea Southern Indiana had earthquakes, but to the guide and the others from the area, they seemed to be a pretty big deal.  Apparently, a cave is the safest place you can be in an earthquake because of the way the cave is formed.  It’s layers of rocks, so when the earth shakes, the layers just sort of slide on each other.  Like how San Francisco City Hall is built so that the whole building just sort of slides across the foundation when there’s an earthquake.  Pretty neat.

The tour was lots of fun.  My shoes came out fine, my pants a bit muddy on the bottom and my head only a little sore from knocking it on the cavern ceiling a couple of times.  What a great detour!