Ohio Caverns

One of the places on our Ohio Bucket List is the Ohio Caverns, so we finally made it up there mid October.  It's about 45 minutes north of Dayton, not to bad of a drive.  I was really worried it was going to be freezing but it wasn't bad at all in the caves (the caves stay around 50 degrees all year round), outside the wind was chilly.  :)    The caves were really cool.  Connor was so excited to be going in a cave.  The tour we took was about 45 minutes and went all through the cave.  Honestly, when we first walked in to the cave I got claustrophobic (which I'm not, or I thought) and panicked a little but was fine a couple minutes later (just to note...this was all in my head, I kept my composure very well on the outside!)  :)   

While we waited for our tour to start we bought a bag of 'dirt' that had hidden gemstones in it and we had to sift through it the old fashioned way.  It was fun!  And Connor found quite a few gemstones.  

Briella even joined in the fun! 

The results of our labor! :)

Then we started our tour of the cave.

 Connor didn't let go of my hand the entire time.  

 This was the path we walked with our guide.  It got very narrow at times and low clearance.  Poor Matt had Briella on his back in the backpack and his legs got quite the workout squatting from the low ceilings.   

 It's so beautiful.  The cave was completely carved out by water and ice over the years.  The only thing men did was scoop out the mud so there was a walkway. 

 This is the biggest stalagmite in the cave.  It took hundreds of years to form.  They call it 'The big white carrot'. 

What's funny.....right when we came around the corner to look at it a bat flew right at us.  It freaked us out! We hadn't seen any until then and I'd forgotten they live in there.  :)

I left there amazed at nature.  I'm so glad we went - I highly recommend it!