Underground as in caverns…because caves are different. Trust me.
Amy and I ventured to the lovely Florida Caverns State Park today to check out their lovely Caverns.
It was a fantastic choice for the hot summer day because the caverns generally stay at about 65°. It was lovely. Until we stepped back outside and my glasses fogged up as did my camera.
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- Pretty Colors in the Christmas Tree room.
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- Bacon! Or ribbons…you know, whatever.
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- The Cathedral
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- Carbonic acid from rain that seeps through the forest floor eats through the concrete. Think of that next time you’re drinking a Coke.
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- Stalactites in the Christmas Tree room–Stalactites hold “tight” to the ceiling!
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- The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Lean with it.
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- The South America Pool. Look! Water!
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- The most difficult picture of the day.
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- The Wedding Room. Where people have actual weddings.
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- The Waterfall Room.
Looking back at the pictures, the caverns look a lot more like a Martian landscape than they did while were walking through. The history of the caverns is somewhat fascinating. The CCC (the Civilian Conservation Corps) began work on it in 1933 as part of FDR’s stimulus package with the state parks. They finished work on it in 1942 when all the young men (roughly ages 18 to 26) were drafted for WWII. One of the last caverns we walked through wasn’t finished to the degree that the others were (i.e. you could bang your head on the ceiling a little…lot more easily) because the workers were drafted before they could finish digging. You could actually see, in one part, where the original floor was where the workers would have crawled in (for about 300/400 feet of space the workers only had 11 in of clearance). Definitely not a job for someone with claustrophobia. The workers made a dollar a day, but only ended up keeping 25 cents of it. The rest would go straight to their families.
So if you’re looking for a day trip around the Tallahassee area, we’d both highly recommend it. Some of the TripAdvisor reviews claim that it’s strenuous exercise, but it was actually just a light little walk…so…don’t trust everything you read on the internet ! 
And lastly, when you see a statue that looks like this, you have to take a picture with it.
