Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Spring Fling, Great Saltpetre Cave, Kentucky

About 20 or so of us Huntsville Grotto-ers and about 20 or so DUG members - Dayton Underground Grotto - met at the Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve for a weekend of camping and caving. A number of grotto members dodged the tornados and bad weather to get up to Kentucky (myself included), and some did not make it up at all - because the highways were shut down (which was a bummer - but I'm glad they were all ok- and didn't get whisked away by one of the tornados)

The weekend was filled with adventure - tornados, walkie-talkies, Mad Libs, brown recluse spiders, water & gigantic logs stranding people on the little island in the camp, camp fires, hypothermia, waterfalls, and finally exhausted hysteria.

On Saturday Lance, Tommy, Michelle, and I managed to do two cave trips on the GSP property - and rescue a frog in the process! (I am now a member of GEFRT - The Glove Extraction & Frog Rescue Team) Later that evening we watched the 2005 HSV grotto slideshow and DUG's Christmas slideshow - both were quite fun! Andy had brought trade items from Dayton, Ohio - candy and chips that are made in Dayton - and Michelle and I brought RC colas and moonpies along with cotton growing kits. And then we did a dark trip in Great Saltpetre Cave. What's a dark trip you ask? Well the Great Saltpetre cave used to be a commercial cave, and is still equipped with electric lights. So what you do is turn out the light and make your way out by feel only - with a 30 minute time limit. Its way super fun - really wild indeed!


The rainbow that appeared on Friday evening as we were headed out to grab some groceries for dinner.



Paul with our pad for the weekend. Tommy's tent is on the left, Michelle, Paul and I's is the big one in the middle and then Lance's is on the right.



Some daddy's and a cave cricket in Lloyd Mullins Cave



Lance, Michelle and Tommy next to old iron kettle pieces used in saltpetre production during the Civil War.



Now there's "rocking and pack" and then there's "Packing a Rock." I'm packin'!



The frog we rescued from Crooked Creek. I sacraficed my Nalagene bottle to collect him and we carefully toted him out and set him down on a nice mossy log by the creek.



Lance, Michelle, Tommy and I back from our cave outing Saturday afternoon.



This is the stream and its little road going accross to the island on Friday evening.



This is everyone trying to haul the gigantic log out of the way and off the road to the little island Saturday afternoon. Even after it was pulled out of the way it was still a few more hours till the water dropped low enough to drive accross. See the two people standing on the far side and the massive log in front of them?



Andy, Michelle, Tommy, Paul, Lance and Nathan just before we left Sunday morning.



Paul's "little mustard accident" - I was in the splash zone for this one!

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3 Comments:

At 9:25 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great pics! I can't believe that Steve and I missed it!! Waaaah111 :-( But now I'm just looking forward to the next trip!

 
At 12:01 PM, Blogger Laura Williams said...

i cannot BELIEVE you put a FROG in your water bottle. . .please PLEASE tell me you have disposed of the water bottle. (See post regarding my feeling about frogs on www.loloschpadora.blogspot.com)
OXOXX miss you beanie

 
At 6:27 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

UMMMM FROG LEGS !!!!
da big brother

 

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