Oregon Road Trip: Day Four - Oregon Caves

Monday the 24th, we woke up and said goodbye to our little cabin.  We had a few last looks at the Rogue River as we headed out of town to the Oregon Caves National Monument.  The Caves are located 30 minutes away from a little town called, appropriately, Cave Junction.  It's a curvy, mountain road and Leo felt a little carsick on the way up.  Fortunately, he didn't throw up and we got to the caves with time to check into the hotel and check in for our tour of the caves.  

The only way to see the caves is on a ranger-guided tour.  

This isn't the ranger.    

And this isn't the ranger. 

Here's the ranger.  Ranger Kat.  She started off the tour with a little demo about different types of rocks and Serafina help her out.  

We entered into the cave and followed the path.  It was narrow and dark and I thought immediately "I've made a terrible mistake".  

I have a wee bit of clastraphobia.  I don't like entering a small space that doesn't have an easy exit route, but that's exactly the experience of the caves.

I had to be brave and calm for the kids.  I could tell they were both a little tense, especially when the ranger turned the lights off so we could experience total darkness which can only be achieved in a cave like that one, the bottom of the ocean and deep space.  I held hands with the kids...mostly for my own benefit.  So why did I endure this?  Well, it was another incredible experience.

The caves were beautiful and eerie and educational.  The path was narrow and sometimes we had to duck down to get around.

There was also fascinating history, like this note left inside the cave in the late 1800s. 

Towards the end of the tour, we came to some areas that opened up a bit more.

It was really very cool and cold.  The temperature outside the cave that day was in the low 80s.  Inside the cave it was 44 degrees.

I'm pretty sure this was the look on my face the entire time.  A combination of "holy crap, what am I doing? Get me out of here" and "This is so amazing and I'm glad I'm experiencing it with my family." 

Shew.  After 90 minutes we saw daylight again and it was amazing.

Silly faces.

Because we are mean, awful parents, we made the kids take a little hike after our cave tour so we could get a scenic view of the Illinois Valley.  

Here's a little cave opening we spotted on our way down.

We headed back to the Historic Chateau, which is the only lodging at the caves.  See...historic.

Tom had to do some work, so the kids and I explore the Chateau including the soda counter.  We split a blackberry milkshake since the kids were missing their special "Blackberry Beach" at our cabin.

This was a nice place to rest.  After the sun went down we sat in this same spot and watched bats fly by.

We circled back around to the cave entrance.  You could feel the cold air by just getting close to the mouth of the cave.

 The lodging and dinner at the Chateau were actually the low point of our trip.  I won't go into the details, but it wasn't great.  Here's one more highlight though.  Under the glass at the dinner table were registration cards from when the Chateau first opened.  The one under our table documented that a Leo had stayed in our exact room in 1938.