A group I found via the internet was planning a caving trip this day and arrangements were made for Melissa to be home so that I could go. The plan was to meet up in Knoxville at 10 AM. I pulled into the parking lot right at 10 AM. Sweet!
Vince and Misti arrived shortly after and introductions were made. We had to go and pick up one other person and then we would head out.
I haven't been caving for a long time, so I was a bit anxious to get there. We finally got rolling and were headed off to a cave called Spring Hill Cave. They had never been to this one before and had wanted to hit it for a long time, so I am sure they were a bit anxious too. This cave supposedly had a 30' high and 50' wide mouth.
It was almost noon, though, and hunger mandated us stopping at a Hardee's. We must've been in the drive-thru line for 20 minutes. Fast food, my ass! Again, I was anxious to get into the cave, so maybe it just *seemed* that long -- I didn't time it. ; )
We finally got to the site where we could park the car and got geared up. We had a rough idea of where the cave was and began hiking in that direction.
We also had GPS coordinates of the cave, but Robby had left his GPS in the car. We walked around all up and down that blessed hill, but couldn't find the damn thing! You would think a 30'X50' hole would not be too difficult to spot.
It was decided that we would try to get there from another place, so we loaded up and headed that way. Only to find a trailer being moved blocking the road. Well, it wasn't exactly moving. We sat there for another 10 minutes and it still hadn't moved, so we headed back to where we were.
This time Robby remembered his GPS and we tried to narrow in on the coordinates. It was soon decided that the coordinates (out of an old book prior to using GPS satellites) were wrong. So an intense scouring of the terrain ensued.
We all split off and I finally thought maybe if I headed in the opposite direction of where we were looking, maybe I would stumble upon it. I spotted a huge rock face and wandered over towards it. BOOYAH!
There it was! It was quite impressive! I couldn't get a good shot of it to capture it well. It was pretty massive.
Oddly Robby had showed up just a couple seconds prior to me getting there. Vince and Misti soon showed
up and we were ready.
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| Vince checking it out |
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| inside the mouth, lookin' out |
It was 2:30 by now. I would guess the search for it took us a couple hours. It's finally time to to get down and dirty.
We began exploring a few areas. You could either go right or left without crawling as the inside was just as large as the mouth was. There was also a hole leading straight back from the entrance that necessitated crawling through. Vince quickly filed into it and I followed him. Robby joined us shortly after. Misti chose not to.
This led to a pit and Vince went down and looked around a bit. I never went down there and neither did Robby. Vince soon came back out and we took the path to the left.
There weren't many off-chutes to this main passage. After a few hundred yards, it ended in a climb. Robby went up it and so did I. Misti and Vince did not. This also seemed to end rather quickly. I spied this little guy who is in the process of becoming one with the cave.
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| crystallized bat |
By the time Robby and I re-joined Misti and Vince, they were seated eating lunch. We all sat there and hung out for a bit and tried to get a picture of the light coming into the cave, but this is the best I could get.
We then explored the right leg of the cave. It also seemed to end too quickly before going into a precarious looking climb.Besides, it's now getting late in the day due to how long it took us to initially find it. Much of the exploring will have to wait for another day.
Odd! for as large a mouth of the cave, it didn't really seem to really go anywhere. It also seemed lacking in interesting formations. Although, it may be that we just didn't get deep enough into the cave.
All in all it was a great day with some new friends.
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