Cave!

My friend Jason was successful in finding the cave the other day, and I was anxious to get out and see it myself. Luckily this time of year the days are slow so we were able to meet up today and get out there. As soon as we entered the woods we saw a deer high on a ridge above us. As she looked down at us, barely visible between the trees, fog drifting in the air, it really felt like a good omen. It took a little bit of searching to find the entrance back but as soon as we came across a deep trench we knew we were close. Here is the entrance to the cave with Jason getting ready to put his helmet on.

You have to climb up on a little ledge to get into the main part of the cave. The tunnel really doesn't lead all that far back, but far enough to slither around a few corners and hide plenty of cool little animals, so it was easy to spend a bit of time in there. The cave stays close to the surface and in a couple of places there are some vents that let in natural light, like this one:

On either side of the "main passage" there are some shallow crevices that lead back. Here is one, showing the large drops of water that are on the ceiling of most of the cave:

Jason has done a lot of cave research in the past, and is full of awesome (and some harrowing) stories about exploring caves and searching for cave critters. Check out his blog for some of his photos of today. Here he is photographing a cave moth:

Here I am exploring a crevice for critters. There was some cool orange fungus growing in this hole too:

I didn't have a proper helmet with headlamp, but still managed to maneuver my flashlight in ways to get some cool shots of cave critters. Here are my favorite images of a spider, snail, and moth. Notice the drop of water ready to drip off the snail shell:

What a fun adventure it was today!