Leslie and David's Wanderings: 13 September 2019 More Caves

We headed west today to the Oregon Caves National Monument. The road up to the monument is VERY curvy and narrow. This is a fairly small national monument surrounded by national forest. It was made a national monument in 1909 by President Taft. This cave is different from the others we have been to in that this cave is in Marble. We stopped at the visitor center to collect our 48th Passport Stamp,and looked through the gift store and exhibits. They don’t have a park film to watch. We arrived around 11Am but our reservations were for the 1 o’clock tour. We heard that there might be an 11:30 tour so we talked to the ranger about changing to the earlier tour and were able to arrange it. We are really glad we did! The 11:30 tour group was only 6 people and the 1pm tour was closer to 20 people. They made both of us take off our shoes so they could ‘decontaminate” them since we had worn them in other caves (concern is about bat powder nose). The cave has had people going through it since the mid 1800s. There are inscriptions in the cave that go back to at least 1883 from the Father of Oregon geology, Professor Thomas Condon. He had his entire class with him (half were women) and while in the cave they all signed their names on a prominent stalagmite in pencil. An attempt to erase the graffiti was made but a layer of calcite had preserved their names forever…until more calcite build-up eventually covers it over. Preservation of history or graffiti that needs to be cleaned up? The CCC in the 1930s made big improvements to the cave accessibility and opened up new sections of the cave not previously known about. There were extensive renovations made in the 1990s as well.

We met up with Ranger Simon and the other members of our tour group. This is a much more physical cave tour than most of the others we have been in. There were lots of low sections that required stooping, duck walking or limbo stepping. There are not a lot of cave formations compared to other caves due to type of rock and they are not as colorful as we have seen in other caves (lack of minerals in the marble). They found 38,000 year old Jaguar bones deep in the cave as well as bones of a 50,000 year old flat face bear. No human habitation was found. This cave has a fairly strong creek running through most of it. The tour lasted 1.5 hours.

After the tour we pulled out our lunch and found a nice picnic table. The lodge was closed for renovations so we could not get a beer. While we were eating our lunch, a Ranger came up and talked to us for a while. The lodge was originally built in the 1920s and the stream that runs through the cave also runs through the restaurant. It only has 23 rooms, but apparently is booked full in most summers. The visitor center also has quarters for rangers and scientists in the upper floors. The siding of the buildings is made of cedar tree bark, which provides a unique look. We would like to come back here sometime when the lodge is open just to stay in it.

On the way back to the Wanderer, we decided to check out a vineyard. We stopped at Deer Creek vineyard for a wine tasting. We walked a way with a couple bottles of their refreshing and light wines.