Under The Earth

My son Logan loves to explore. He particularly likes being outdoors. He is happiest when he is hunting or camping or fishing or climbing a mountain or doing the thing I hate most--exploring a cave.

Logan and I had been home from visiting family on my mother’s side in Indiana less than a day when my husband’s parents called him. They were camping up at the White River at Bull Shoals and wanted us to come up.

I stopped unpacking our bags and began repacking them. Logan, Gary, and his dad had a lot of fun trout fishing and did pretty well. It’s a subjective thing up there. Sometimes the fish bite as quickly as you can drop the bait in the river, and sometimes they won’t bite no matter what you do. This trip up, they seemed to be hungry and the guys enjoyed themselves.

We were all set to come home Sunday, then I saw an ad for Blanchard Springs Caverns. Logan has been to several caves, including the one at Bull Shoals. He has never been to one the size of Blanchard Springs, though, and we thought he would enjoy it.

They wanted to go on the "Wild Tour," so we bought the required boots Sunday for the Monday morning trip. Then Gary and Logan got to the Cave and discovered something not on the informational brochure we had gotten. The Wild Tour takes five hours. And it costs $75 a piece.
I’m claustrophobic in the extreme, which is why only Gary and Logan were going in the first place. It would be $150 for them to go into the cave, on a tour that would require hard hats, ropes, crawling on their hands and knees, and slithering on their belly. I was thinking folks needed to be paid to go on that, not have to pay.

Gary and Logan went on the Discovery Trail, which took about two hours and still required lots of walking and climbing; 686 steps in all. The last part of the tour is called "heart attack hill" because it is a straight vertical climb up stairs.

They had a great time. Oddly enough, the guys want to go back and try the Wild Tour. They are thinking of making a return trip for Logan’s birthday next month.

If they do, I will go with them…to the front door of the visitor center. I can’t breathe if I get any closer, so I will drop them off and then go read a good book or something, safely above ground.
When they get back, they will talk about all the tight spaces and confined areas they were in, and tell me how great it was. And I will smile, and be so thankful for open spaces and fresh air.