Caverns

Today we we went on a mini road trip to Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna. Realizing we haven't explored much of Florida yet, much less the neighboring counties, a new visit was in order. The drive was close to 1.5 hours one way, but we passed the time easily with pulling up music on Google Music, trying to guess artists and song titles of classic rock and old country music. A few conclusions: We knew more Chicago than we thought. Also discovering how much we love Sawyer Brown, even though haven't thought of them in 15 years.

Anyway, it was an on and off rainy day today, with typical mugginess. Florida Caverns State Park features the only public cave tours in Florida.

We bought tickets for the 4 pm cave tour, so we had a little time to kill before the tour.

Checked out the museum, learning about Florida snakes...

So many...

Butterfly

Civilian Conservation Corps statue, since most of the park was constructed by CCC workers under the New Deal. Brought up a debate between us if such effort could done in modern times. Conclusion: would be awesome if such public projects could be done again, but doubtful if it would work in today's society.

Sign welcoming tour attendees.

They weren't lying.

 And the cave. The temp was about 65F, refreshing compared to topside. We were in a group of 25 for about 30 minutes. The air felt dense, but not stale. I wanted to capture the light and dark contrasts in the caverns, so I didn't use the camera flash. I was happy and surprised with the results. Tripods aren't allowed in the caverns on tours, so I had to be creative with the light balance when framing. Plus the low light setting helped me out a lot too.

Right on cue, there was a bat sighting, a sleeping one. Of course the bat was in a narrow passage that the group needed to pass through, so we were to pass quietly and no flash photography near it. I am surprised the kids on the tour with us didn't freak out (or an adult), but the bat didn't stir once. A real well-behaved bat or well placed fake bat? Hmmm... Didn't matter, I took an obligatory zoomed in blurry shot and kept my distance. I didn't care to find out. :-)

Bat! 

After the tour, we checked out the Blue Hole Spring, swimming area in the park that is spring-fed. Did not look refreshing, but I think the recent flooding made the water dark and cloudy. The swimming area was closed anyway.

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