Penn's Cave

Last weekend we went to Penn's Cave. It's an all-water cavern that you have to take a boat through it. We were there early in the season so we had a private tour. 

Here we are walking down the steps to the boat.

Ready to go!

It was hard to get good pictures in there, but this is a shot of a formation called The Statue of Liberty

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It was interesting to see so many different formations. And then there were spots where the cave "roof" was completely flat. Our tour guide was very patient. Sean had a million questions and I think he could have cared less about our guide's script he was trying to stick to. 

These next few pictures are pretty cool. There was one large room where they have set up a light display. The red one is a sunset.

Green for an alien planet.

I can't remember what he called this one. Maybe the rainbow room or something. If Jon remembers I'll update this.

There are different lights that have been set up throughout the caverns, but at one point our guide asked if we wanted to experience total darkness. We agreed. The boys didn't like it very much, but it was pretty cool. Many years ago, people blasted a hole at the end of the cavern and created a man made lake, so our tour went through the cavern, out to the lake and then back. We also saw several bats sleeping in the stalactites. Sean kept pointing out formations for us (he saw a turtle, elephant, and some other things). He expected to see shiny minerals through the whole cavern thanks to an episode of Dinosaur Train.

Here's a video of us going through a tight spot. It's where a large formation fell from the ceiling and they call the rock in the water now called the Rock of Gibraltar, so we went through the Straight of Gibraltar.

The gift shop had some fun things in it and the boys each chose a little bag of stones to bring home. At some times in the year (probably later in the spring and summer) they let people pan for gems. I was really hoping the boys would get to do that, but they were ok with their little bags of rocks.