An Underground Hike – Onondaga Cave State Park
If you ever want to feel like you are on another planet, Onondaga Cave State Park is the place to visit. Except here you’re not ON our planet, but IN our planet! With spring approaching, and the new season of cave tours just around the corner (Mid April), I wanted to share this amazing Missouri experience.
The boys and I have been on a few cave tours over the years, but I’d never realized that Onondaga Cave was just about an hour up the road. Our original intention was to hike in the park…above ground, but once we got there we saw a sign about the cave tour and decided to give it go. I was not expecting a cave of this magnitude and beauty!! The boys were excited about the prospect of seeing bats! Me…not so much.
The tour consists of about a mile “underground hike,” that twists and turns around sites and goes up and down several stories of inclines and declines. At times there were stairs, other times slick ramps. And you must always watch your head! I had Oakley on my back in his carrier so I had to watch two heads! At times I found myself practically duck-walking under rock ledges to avoid bumping our heads!
The tour guide was very knowledgeable and didn’t just “follow the script.” When asked questions, she knew most of the answers. The boys were slightly disappointed to learn that it was becoming more and more rare to see the bats as, like other bat populations, were being infected by White-Nose Syndrome that was killing them off. Because of that, we had to go inside this chamber to be “disinfected” prior to entering the cave.
Once inside the cave it was like we’d been transported to another planet. The path twisted and turned around various rock, stalactite, and stalagmite formations. The best way to describe the look of these formations would be to say that we had entered the home planet of Jabba the Hutt! We were surrounded by his relatives!
As we continued on our journey through the cave all we could do was marvel at the beauty, which was intensified by strategically placed lights. There were large underground rooms big enough to blow hot air balloons up in, views that you could see up or down several “stories,” and even the tallest underground waterfall in the cave (granted it was only about a foot tall)!
During one portion of the tour, we circled around a shallow pool of water and then had the lights turned out on us!! It was very eery to think of being in the cave without the lights and exploring it for the first time with nothing but flashlights and headlamps!
I was especially fascinated by the “bacon” stalactite found in the cave. This was the first time that anyone had ever pointed out this particular type of stalactite to me. And the way they had it backlit really did make it look like bacon!
There’s one portion of the tour that is optional. One has to climb up several steep ramps to get inside of a room that is full of shallow pools of water with amazing formations like I’ve never seen. It’s not an easy climb but totally worth it if you can make it. This was probably my favorite part of the cave.
And the big question of the day….did we see bats? Yes we did! More than one!! We actually encountered our first bat as we were coming back down the ramp from the room just mentioned. However, I didn’t get a good look at it because I was too busy ducking and covering. Not kidding, that bat zipped around mine and my mother’s head a few times and just about had a head on collision with me before he took off! From that point on, our senses were piqued for another encounter, which happened right before we exited the cave. One lonely bat was literally just “hanging out” above the trail on the cave ceiling. We moved very quietly underneath it and it never moved. He was about the size of the palm of my hand, and believe it or not, I thought he looked kind of, dare I say, cute!
We had one final farewell wave as we left the cave. Though it didn’t appear to be the friendliest kind of wave. Maybe because we were on planet Jabba the Hutt, who is the galaxy’s most powerful gangster! (Sorry, reverted back to nerd mode)
As we exited we had to walk across a bio-security mat that was supposed to destroy any components of the White-Nose Syndrome that we may have carried out with us, to help slow the spread of the disease.
Even though we had intended to hike outside of the cave, we really enjoyed our Underground Hike. We will go back another day to tackle the above ground trails.
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