Caverne dans Le Roc

Over the weekend we had the opportunity to do an earthcache at a cave - Caverne dans Le Roc - or more commonly known as Cave In Rock.

Cave In Rock is located in southern Illinois in Hardin county and is right on the banks of the Ohio River.  The cave has a wonderful and sordid history, dating to it's discovery in 1739 by the french explorer who named it.  Over the years since, the cave has been a home to an assortment of counterfeiters, gamblers, robbers, and thieves.  River travelers were often lured to the cave and then robbed and killed.  A scene depicting this is documented in the film How the West was Won.  Who wouldn't want the chance to explore a cave with such a remarkable history?

Once I learned that the location was also the spot of an earthcache, I planned a visit.  In order to reach the cave from the Kentucky side, we had to first wait in a line of cars to take a ferry across the Ohio River....

The ferry is the only means of crossing the river for miles around and is open from 7:00 am until 9:00 pm daily.  The ferry holds approximately 15 cars and takes about 5 minutes to make the crossing...

Right now we were in the middle of the river and here's my GPS showing where we are and where the cave/cache is located.....

Once we reached the opposite bank it was a quick 2 minute drive to the state park.  There were practically no cars in the parking lot and we made our way down the stairs to the river banks....

Once at the bottom level we walked around looking at the limestone walls and investigating all the nooks and crannies....

We found a small cave and Kyle had a good time climbing up the walls a little bit...

Once we made our way over to the main cave, we were intrigued at all the named written high on the ceilings.  How in the world did they do that?

Once inside the entrance, the cave opened up wide and went quite far back.  I expected it to be musty smelling, but it wasn't at all.  It was a comfortable temperature too.  Small pools of water were collected here and there.  The rock was surprisingly smooth.

High overhead was an opening at the top of the cave.  I thought it looked like a pointing finger.  Leaves and debris kept floating down on top of us...

This shot was taken from the rear of the cave, looking out....

It was really interesting to climb around and look at everything and it was fun to discuss the characters who had inhabited this cave over the years.....

Of course we had to pose for a phooning photo at the entrance!

An earthcache usually involves some sort of geological feature.  You have to go to the area and gather  information about the feature.  In this case we had to find the name and date of someone who was in the cave almost 100 years ago, tell what geological feature is at the back of the cave, measure the entrance width and then post a photo of ourselves in front of the cave with our GPS.

Once we gathered all the necessary information in order to log in the cache, we went back up to the top of the cave....

At the top they have an area where the hole leading down into the cave has been blocked off.  You can see the huge brick circle in the distance and that's where the opening is located and grated over...

Afterwards, we drove back to the ferry, where we had to sit in line for about 25 minutes and wait for our turn to cross.  The town of Cave In Rock was established in 1839....

As we crossed the river we could see the river bank we had just walked, the limestone bluffs we had climbed and the cave entrance....

I really thought that it was a lot of fun exploring the cave.  It was nice that there were very few people there at the time and we got a good chance to explore and climb around.  I'd definitely go back again.