Florida Caverns

 7-23-2021 - Friday

After breakfast, we drove over to the Florida Caverns State Park.  

We got on the 10:45 tour, so we had about a 40 minute wait.  We checked out the gift shop, then went through the small museum and watched a film about the caverns.  The museum included an exhibit about FDR's New Deal and the CCC's, who had built the buildings, part of the park, and dug out the trails in the caverns.  Our tour guide talked a lot about the CCC boys, the hard work they did for $1.00 per day.  Of the $30 they made per month, $25 was sent home to their parents, and they got to keep $5.00.  Since my dad was part of that. I appreciated her respect for what the did.  She kept calling them boys, which they were -- I think my dad was 16 when he joined -- but I never really thought of them that way. 

Our tour guide was great, a real character.  She called herself Honey Bee, the bad babysitter, and tried to capture the interest of the kids on the tour.  She made the tour interesting and entertaining.

The caverns were beautiful, lots of formations, stalactites and stalagmites, rock formations, some pools. 

 There were several rooms (I may have read somewhere that there were 10), one we didn't get to tour because it was flooded.  One of the first rooms was the Wedding Room, because of this wedding-cake-like formation.  They actually hold weddings in here, and birthday parties (it's a birthday cake then).

It was an easy walk in the caves, the trail was good, with a few puddles and drips, and we had to bend over some, but it wasn't strenuous.  One of the kids spotted a bat on the ceiling, which Honey Bee had not seen, so that was some excitement for a while.  I think I finally saw it, but it was very small.  Joe took a picture, but it isn't very clear because he had to zoom in so much.  Did you know these bats eat 400-500 mosquitos an hour!!!  Go Bats!

Honey Bee also talked about 2018 Hurricane Michael, which sat over this town for several hours.  It took out 90% of the trees in this park, and the power lines, which left the caves without electricity for 6 months.  The campground here is still under construction from that hurricane.  We finished the tour and walked back to the gift shop.  The 65 degree temperature in the caves was fine, the humidity kept it from being cold, but the outside heat was almost debilitating.  We watched another film in the museum just to catch our breath and cool off.  Then we drove through the park.  We crossed the river and could see lots of trees laying in the water from the hurricane.

We made a couple of stops in town, found a Mexican restaurant for lunch, and finally headed back to the RV so Joe could try to figure out the problem with the idle on the RV.  He checked under the hood outside (it was very, very hot and muggy), then took the doghouse off inside and looked for loose wires or whatever.  He couldn't find anything, so he put the doghouse back on, googled it, then laid down and thought about it. He  got up, removed the doghouse again, and started checking out the hoses, which was a google suggestion.  Almost immediately, he tracked down a hole in the PCV ventilation hose.   The good thing was that it was inside work. 

So now he has to find a replacement, and it's 4:30 on Friday.  We hurried back into town, to the Ford dealer (didn't have it), and two parts stores.  The second one thought they could make one up for him.  Meanwhile, I'm staying in the Jeep and it's pouring down rain, thunder and lightning.  Joe finally came out with parts, so we found a place for dinner, then back to the RV we went.  It took him a couple of hours (the hose wasn't exactly a perfect fit, so he had to do some McGyvering), but when he got it all hooked back up, and started the motor, it sounded good.  Hopefully, we are done with that.

The rain stopped while we were at dinner, and dropped the temperature about 15 degrees.  Thank God!  Joe spent some time figuring out our route for tomorrow, so we hope everything with the RV is good and that we can move on up (north) the road.  We are heading into Alabama, so we are not expecting any cooler temperatures.