Caving In!

I've been wanting to take the boys to the Ohio caverns near West Liberty for awhile. We finally got our chance a few weekends ago, and we decided to make a camping trip out of it. It was a good chance to see whether Caleb would be a happy camper or a sad one, and admission to the caves was free for kids four and under. Therefore, we picked the weekend of May 15th to go (Ethan turned five on May 22nd).

Ryan and I noticed that setting the camper up goes much faster now that we can get some help from the boys:

Caleb turned out to be a happy camper, though he resisted the first couple of naps. It was on this trip that we discovered he really, really likes graham crackers.

We got there Friday evening; Saturday morning we packed a picnic lunch and headed to the caverns. It's hard to get good pictures inside caves, but you can get an idea of what we saw. We had the same problem when we toured Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico three years ago, which was too bad because that was an amazing trip. Come to think of it, that was Andrew's first camping trip. But I digress.

The formations that hang from the ceiling are stalactites; those that grow up from the floor are the stalagmites.

Sometimes the two formations meet to create a column.

The caverns are (obviously) underground beneath some beautiful rolling Ohio countryside.  The farm on which the caverns are located had a really nice picnic area and the weather was gorgeous, so we had a nice relaxing lunch. Ethan and Andrew enjoyed just running around the grounds while Caleb napped in his car seat; Ryan and I had a chance to sit and chat.

The boys wanted to us to play with them after a while so we suggested that they run down the big hill to the little oak tree at the very bottom and run back. Well, they took off, reached the tree, and headed back. Apparently they are in very good shape. As they were heading up the hill and slowing down considerably, Ryan and I saw the shadow of a bird of prey on the ground behind them, and I joked to Ryan that the bird was waiting for them to collapse so he could have lunch. We laughed, and then noticed that the bird was circling lower, and lower... it kept coming, and finally I said, "Alright, this has gone far enough" and stood up. That was all it took for the bird to take off in the other direction. Kind of scary! I stayed with the boys after that. Somehow I ended up running down to the tree with them and back two times, and it turned out that the little tree was actually a pretty good sized tree!

After all the cave exploration and running around we stopped off at this "castle" on the way back to the campground. It is owned by the Piatt family and is somewhat in the process of being restored. It is not much compared to, say, the Biltmore Estate, but they do have children's activities throughout the house such as pattern block, puzzles, and drawing materials so that grownups can read the information and yet keep an eye on their happily occupied children.

Well, needless to say after all that we had three tired boys. I think that helped Caleb get over his camper-nap-resistance. When we got back to the camper we put all three of them down for a nap and they all slept for at least two and a half hours, all at the same time!