Monday, December 14,2015, Florida Caverns SP

Florida Caverns State Park was close by and we are apparently "Cave People," so we went exploring. There was a tour at 9:30, but with 5 miles to go at 9:20 we were pretty sure we would have to wait for the 11:00 tour. A few minutes later, we passed a bank sign and realized we had crossed back into Central Time. Wow! It has to be confusing for the locals around here. On the plus side though, it meant we had no problem making the 9:30 tour.

Joani had called about reservations but was told they really were not necessary. Below was our tour group: Ranger Amanda, Ron and Susan, and Joani and me. Small groups are the best - you get to hear everything, you feel comfortable asking questions and you hardly ever get lost because the ranger notices when 25% of her tour goes missing.

It was clear Ranger Amanda enjoyed her job as she filled us in on the history of the cave.

Federal work programs in the 1930's opened up passages to make the cave accessible to the public.

Shell fossils embedded in the low ceiling reminded us that this used to be beneath the ocean.

The workers cemented porcelain plates into the ceiling as reflectors for their gas lamps. I'm pretty sure they still had poor lighting compared to all of the current electric lighting. You know the workers back then would have loved to have one of the super bright LED flashlights that Amanda carried for highlighting the interesting cave features.

Starting in 1938, the CCC workers were paid $1 a day (for 4 years) to dig out the floor of a crawl space to allow us lookie-loos to maneuver the cave without crawling.

The caverns were currently active meaning there was a lot of water seeping through the ceiling and walls creating new features.  I think there were more draperies in these caves than we have seen in all other caves together.

The Christmas Tree room got its name from the large stalagmite that piled up on the cavern floor looking a lot like, you guessed it, a Christmas Tree.  They illuminated it with red and green lights that were mostly washed out in the harsh light of the camera's flash.

This was a designated "please touch" formation.  It was very wet and slimy.  The skin oils caused it to blacken (fungus/algae growth?).  They effectively proved the point that the caves would lose their beauty if we all manhandled them.

Ranger Amanda was really good at finding cave critters. The little guy below could have easily been crushed by us unknowing spelunkers, but she kept it lit as we eased by and even took a few pictures.

A tiny White-Spotted Slimy salamander

The Three Lined salamander below was quite a bit larger, maybe 5-6 inches long. He was also quite a bit more nervous, so he didn't hang around long when the light shined his way.

She even found a bat hanging from the ceiling. The light did not bother him in the least which was good since we really did not need to have a bat flying around.

This guy is only about 4 inches long in this sleeping state.

I was shocked when Ranger Amanda said using a flash was no problem!  There was no way you could see that adorable face without it and he never flinched.

Back topside, the mosquitoes were awake and they were hungry. The humidity was so high it was difficult to decide if everything was wet from rain or really heavy dew.

We headed back to the car quickly and viewed the rest of the park behind closed windows. A lot of the park was wetlands with some unusual trees and plants.

Back home at Eastbank Park, another beautiful sunset over Lake Seminole capped a great day of exploring!