Virgins, Concerts, Shamu, and Squirt Guns in Caves!

Friday after work, we packed up two cars with camping and caving gear and set off to the Cumberland Caverns in Tennessee. Not long after arriving and setting up camp (Cumberland Caverns rocks and allows us cavers to camp there for free!), I get the usual I'm lost call from Dana and somehow direct her along the foggy roads to our campsite. We get a little roudy as usual with our 2 handles of Soco (Dana and I think alike) and Sean's obligatory bottle of 2 buck chuck.

The next morning we woke up and headed to a small cave in the area called Cave of the Virgins. I'm still not sure that this cave actually qualifies for vertical status, but nonetheless we set up a rope and rappelled into the VERY tight entrance. The cave was pretty small, but decently decorated and we spent about an hour exploring with everyone rappelling and climbing on out. Getting out the cave was interesting and I just got frustrated as my gear got in the way and some people REALLY struggled to get out.

More of our friends had arrived when we were in the cave and the parking lot for Cumberland Caverns had filled up. The group of us showed our pre-purchased tickets and we were led down the path to the cave entrance. Cumberland Caverns is a very touristy cave and the passages leading to the main room were well lit and all of us cavers looked for tiny side passages that we debated crawling off into. Most of the seats were already taken, so we awkwardly found places to sit on a pile of rocks off to the side and waited for the magical cave bluegrass to start. A concert inside of a cave? Awesome idea as the acoustics made the fiddles and twangy singing sound ethereal.

Post-concert we piled in our various cars and set out for Snail Shell, where we would camp for the night. chili, hobo meals, and bottles of wine put us to sleep this night (after Sean's drunk dialing antics and Lisa's epic first pee in the woods).

A few more friends joined our group the next morning and we all donned our wetsuits and either hiked or rappelled our various flotation devices down to the cave. There were several kayaks, a dingy, 2 intertubes, a pool lounge chair, and Shamu.

Sarah and I grabbed our oars and paddled our little inflatable dingy on into the cave. I think the paddle upstream is about a mile, at which point all of us but Dana deserted our respective floatation devices and preceded into the cave by foot. Dana was determined to use her River Rat raft (1 of the 2 that had survived Puerto Rico) for as long as possible, and this eventually led to its demise.

We hiked on in for a while, having to occasionally swim...but, all too soon we had to head back out of the cave and on the road back to the ATL.