Visiting Forestville Mystery Cave

We spent the weekend in southern Minnesota at Forestville State Park  with Auntie Dot and her crew.  Forestville State Park was not a place on my radar at all.  Auntie Dot came up with the idea of meeting there, and before I thought too much about what it would mean to take a camping trip the first weekend after school started, I agreed.  Although it was a bit crazy preparing to camp at a state park so far away (you should SEE how every inch of the space in our van gets used when we go camping . . . we are really, really packed in like sardines), it was totally worth it!  Not only did we get some terrific cousin time, we also got to do some really neat things at this state park.

We took a tour of Mystery Cave, and the kidlets totally loved it.  They had never been in a cave before, and it was fascinating for them.  I had been in a cave once before, but not this cave, and I was also fascinated.  A little overwhelmed, because we had a lot of wonderful small people with us on an hour long tour of a cave, but even so I learned and saw a lot in the cave.  According to our (very patient) tour guide, Mystery cave branches out into 13 miles of underground dead ends.  There were narrow passageways, big rooms, domes, underground pools, stalagmites and stalactites (I learned the difference between them), columns, and shelves.  At the end there was an amazing underground pool, pictured in the image above.   It was stunning, and such a surprise.  It’s actually the only image I took inside the cave because while I was busy listening to the tour guide I was also distracted by making sure my kids didn’t touch any rocks and holding my littlest one’s hand.

Although Mr. TOF really had to go to the bathroom by the end of the tour (there were no bathrooms in the cave . . . go figure), he loved it!  His favorite part was walking on the suspended grated walkways above the deep crevices.  YaYa liked the shelf formations in one of the long passageways, The Banana liked the underground pool, and Mr. SP absorbed the whole experience and loved everything about it.  Dr. Peds liked learning about the geology involved in the cave.  Cousin Alex liked when the tour guide turned off all the lights and it was completely black because “it was actually a little creepy.”  Cousin Nathaniel was not a fan of the cave.  He was happiest when he figured out that we were getting ready to leave.