As many of our travels begin, we woke up one Saturday morning with nothing to do. KiKi asked, “what do you want to do today,” and I answered with the usual, “I don’t know.” I’m not sure why I answered this way, because I know that an answer like that is the best way to ensure that I will be sitting in the car for a good long time.
We had been talking about going to tour Florida Caverns State Park ever since our stop by the Ruby Falls cave during a family visit in Tennessee. KiKi loved that cave tour and had been itching to go on another one ever since. Besides that, caves are somewhat unique, and not something Florida is well known for. It always seemed like a really long drive though, and hence we kept putting it off until we had some other excuse for going toward Pensacola, such as my indecisiveness.
I called the park to check on the price and availability of the tours. To get into the park was $5 a car and the tour was only $8 for adults and Elle, our daughter, would be $5. If you’ve done any traveling at all around Florida you would recognize that as a real bargain. While they don’t make tour reservations, in case you don’t show up, the park ranger who answered assured me it would not be a big deal, so long as we made it sometime before the last tour began. That would be at 5 p.m. According to the current time, and the distance we had to drive, I estimated we should arrive around 4:30 p.m. if we kept the stops to a minimum – plenty of time. So, we hopped into the car and headed off down the road.
Of course we hadn’t gone far when Elle got hungry, and there is just something about being trapped in a car in a time crunch that makes everyone have to go to the bathroom twice as often. As I was about to pass the third rest area, amid loud protests, KiKi informed me that we had somehow made up an hour of time, as the arrival time was now 3:30 p.m. according to the GPS. Knowing full well that skipping a couple of rest areas and the obligatory five miles an hour over the posted speed limit would not make up an hour, I couldn’t help but be confused. Yet, there it was, arrival time 3:30 p.m. And then it dawned on me, the caverns must be far enough west that they fall into that portion of the panhandle that was in the central not the eastern time zone. We had a full hour that we hadn’t even anticipated. I jerked the wheel to the right, and into the rest area we went on two wheels.
With the extra hour ahead of us, we started taking a few unnecessary risks. A pit stop for snacks, stretch breaks at all the remaining rest stops. We were having a grand old time, even when we hit that desolate stretch of I-10 between Tallahassee and our destination. Finally, we got to the park at 4:00 on the money, and pulled up to the ranger’s station to pay for our tour. That was when the air was completely let out of our sails.
“The last tour is sold out,” The ranger, who conspicuously sounded like the one I had spoken with earlier, told us.
I was flabbergasted. I had called ahead. I had arrived nearly an hour early. I had done everything right, and yet we were being turned away after a six hour drive across state. I felt like Clark W. Griswold, only I didn’t have a moose to punch. Just as I was about to drive back to the sporting goods store for a BB gun, KiKi leans over from the passenger’s seat and says, “But we just drove all the way up here from Orlando.”
And that is where it all started to change. There is something about KiKi that doesn’t allow anyone to say no to her. After a few minutes of smooth talking, she convinced the ranger to set us up on what he called the night tour. The tour didn’t actually happen at night, and that would have been irrelevant anyway since we were underground. It just meant that they turned off all the electric lights, so that the guests were reliant on flashlights, just like the early cave explorers would have been. This special tour is suppose to be reserved for people camping overnight in the park, but since we had a master of persuasion, an unusual circumstance, and the tour hadn’t filled up yet, they allowed us to participate.
That cave tour didn’t start until 6:30, so we had some extra time to enjoy the park’s other attractions. We went to the museum which had displays about the local wildlife and archeological information about Native American tribes that once called this area home. A nice exhibit, but not enough to consume two-and-a-half hours. Next, we hit the gift shop where KiKi contemplated buying a sticker, but decided she didn’t want to sully her BMW. I bought a Zero bar and shared it with Elle. After that we took an easy hike around the park to find Blue Hole Spring where we relaxed, and enjoying the view. Eventually, it grew late enough to meet up with the tour group back at the gift shop.
Our tour guide, Bill, was courteous, informative, and funny. He pointed out a variety of formations created by the various stalactites (they hang tight to the ceiling), stalagmites (They grow up mighty from the floor) and pillars where the two join together. He had a nickname for every room in the place. A room that appeared to have a great pipe organ was called the cathedral and another room he called the pantry appeared to have carrots and potatoes hanging from the ceiling. There was a heart of stone in one room and a stalagmite formation that cast a shadow that looked like the sinking of the Titanic in another.
It was amazing to behold such natural beauty and to contemplate the millenniums it took to form these structures below the earth. At a centimeter a century, I can’t even fathom the time it took for these features to grow out of the cave walls. Eons before any life we are familiar with exited on this planet many of these structures already possessed majestic forms. Even more magnificent is the way that they blossomed out in such an array of dazzling earth tones, highlighted by the reflections of our flashlights off the slick water dripping down their faces – browns and greens and yellows nearly glowing in the dark. But the most beautiful of them all were the sparkling white features that appeared like great sculptures of pure ice and snow. It was as though some great baker had frosted the cave with the sweetest icing, so beautiful that it could never be eaten, only gazed upon in awe and wonder.
“This is beautiful,” I said.
“Beautiful?” KiKi answered. “This is scary and weird. Didn’t you see The Decent. People die in caves. This doesn’t even look natural. It shouldn’t even be. The only reason we can even come down here and have a good time is because there are two other families with us and God doesn’t kill children.”
I was completely flumoxed. “I though you loved caves,” I whispered between my teeth. “This was your idea!”
“I do. I love this.”
At one point in the tour we turned off all the flashlights to experience total darkness. Bill explained that if someone were to experience this kind of darkness for a long period of time, such as several days or weeks, they would go temporarily blind. He then informed us of an interesting phenomenon that happens in total darkness. “If you stick out your tongue,” he told us, “there is a bacteria on it that glows faintly in the dark.” Of course he immediately clicked on his flashlight, and there was Elle with her tongue sticking out. Thankfully she drew all the attention and no one noticed me slurping my own tongue back into my mouth, too.
A few more twists and turns and there was the exit. Our spelunking adventure had drawn to a close. We left the darkness of the cave and I was surprised to see that the sun hadn’t even fully set yet. We had been on our tour for about 45 minutes, but it seemed like no time had passed at all. We had a choice of hikes back to the parking area, and though we wanted to take the longer path, the light was fading too fast. We also had a really long drive ahead of us, another six hours, and this time, the time change would be working against us.
Rex Vander 