Maquoketa Caves

Sunday afternoon we went to Maquoketa Caves. It was a gorgeous day. We spent most of our time in the shade of trees and in the caves so we didn't feel the heat. That didn't stop us from sweating though. It is hard work hiking. I had to be particularly careful because the rocks were smooth and the dirt wasn't dirt is was clay so much of what we walked on was slick. We hiked through several caves. It was nice and cool inside the caves. One particular cave was called Ice Cave. I had hoped to see ice but it was cold. Dave has a thermometer on his key chain we estimated that it was about 50 degrees in the cave. It was also black as black in there. We didn't take any flash lights, silly us. Riley really enjoyed it. Cheyenne was scared sometimes but got over it quickly. There were a lot of other people hiking too and some of those kids screamed in total terror. For once our kids were not hysterical. I don't know what kind of plant life that was there but along the path were these plants and there were snails all over them. We observed several snails for a while and took pictures. We saw deer, chipmunks and tons of cave birds that darted in and out of the cave walls. Of course there were lots of bugs. Actually watching the snails was fascinating to us. The caves were beautiful and stalactites were beginning to grow is most of them. Lots of streams of water coming out of the caves. Our shoes were pretty muddy when we were done.