Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park

As we were route planning, we noticed that not only could we stay at Missouri Headwaters State Park, but that Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park was not far away (and we had seen that friends Donna and Allen had visited there a few years ago and enjoyed it!). So, we booked the Classic Tour in the cavern for Friday...

Even though we had pre-booked the tickets, we had to wait in line to get the entry pass.

As we have experienced in other caves (Lava River Cave in Oregon - https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/07/saturdays-touring.html), there is concern about the spread of White-Nose Syndrome in bats which may be spread by humans wearing the same clothes in more than one cave and spreading the fungus.

There were two tour options -- the longer and more complete tour was the Classic Tour --

... but it required a hike with 300' gain in elevation to reach the entrance of the cavern.

Carl had heard me say, "300' hike", he did not hear "gain in elevation"... but he was a good sport about it! I made sure to get a picture of him so we'd know what clothes he wore in this cavern in case we visit any others! (We have a challenge when we're asked if we've worn any of the same clothing in another cave -- both remembering what in the world we wore in the previous cave, and because we only have so many items of clothing - especially shoes!)

View from the top before entering the cavern

Our tour group outside the cavern entrance. Our guide had told us that there was a bat nursery just inside the entrance so encouraged us to be quiet so as not to disturb the bats.

Just inside... I think the guy behind me might be saying, "The bats are right up there!"

As far as we understood, this is where the guide said that the mommas and baby bats were...

.... zoomed in, maybe there are bats in that dark area? maybe?

The original (natural) entrance to the cavern has a gate across it.

After we entered the cavern, we started going down...

Structures within the cavern

It was a pretty active tour, involving, bending...

.... scooting on your bottom...

... Carl scooting down....

... and, of course, the initial hike up and walk down many steps within the cavern.

It is hard to appreciate all we saw from the pictures...

This is a picture on the stairs -- we were all commenting on how beautiful the rock was that we were walking on! The steps inside the cavern were built by CCC workers in the 1930s.

Our group in one of the larger rooms -- if you can distinguish the people, you'll get a better notion of the size of the room

You may be able to barely see the head and shoulders of our guide at the bottom right of center of this picture -- this is under structures known as "soda straws".

Cave popcorn

"Crystal Lake"

This looked like drapery to me...

Our Classic Tour ended on the level where we had originally started our 300' hike up -- this was where the Paradise Tour participants enter and leave the cavern, so they have a lot less athletic a tour.

As we were driving over to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, from a distance we could see a field full of white things -- we initially thought it was a junkyard, but as we got there, we saw that it was lots and lots of RVs camped out in the field. On the way back, we took a picture:

We saw a sign that identified this as the Headwaters Country Jam (https://headwaterscountryjam.com/). We looked up information about it... we don't listen to any current country music, but the only group/entertainer that we'd heard of was Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. From the information on the website, boondocking camping was $180 (!!!) for 3 days -- which did not include access to the festival ($200 for 3 days or $95 for one day). It was HOT (mid 90s during the day), and that area would have been very dusty. Seems like a lot of people were there though!