Camping – A Hike Before the Rain… and a Cave

Mar rockMir climbing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We went camping this past weekend, down at Indian Celina Recreation Area. It was a lovely site, and we got to go with some good friends. We went on a hike Saturday at Hemlock Cliffs, which luckily a friend had told Jemme about because, whew, just when you thought, This is a mighty small gravel road, it turned into a dirt road and then sort of a dirt track. But the hike was worth it. Lots of climbing over rocks and scrambling around – a creek in which the kids and Dan and Jemme found various animals AND a salamander’s tail, still wiggling. This time, when traveling, I’d brought trail mix and granola bars, so I didn’t perish from hunger!

Mir me hands

And it was a beautiful day to boot – warm enough for shorts, cool enough that we weren’t melting on the trail.

Started to rain that night.

mar me rain

We decided to pack up and head out, even though we were supposed to have another day. The forecast was for rain all day and then the next, plus thunderstorms. We later discovered that there was also a tornado watch. I get shaky when I’m in my stone house and there’s a weather event; I was not comfortable with being in the tent with, you know, weather. Went to Marengo Caves.

stalagmites

Not the greatest pic but you can see some of the stalagmites – you can remember the difference between stalagmites and stalactites because “You MIGHT trip over them” and “They hang TIGHTLY to the ceiling.” If they grow together, they form a column (“You can remember that because, a column? That’s what we call ’em.”) Now I’ve ruined most of the jokes for the tour guides! Man! I won’t tell you the best one, so you can laugh on the tour!

There were two tours, the Dripstone Trail and the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace had the best formations, and was slightly shorter. It was also helped by the fact that we had a GREAT guide, Larry – it turned out that he was the guide trainer, and he really knew his stuff and was very engaging. The Dripstone Trail had some cool formations as well, but our guide wasn’t as polished as Larry, and somehow the formations didn’t seem as spectacular.

I don’t love camping, but I like it all right, and it does give us a chance to get outside a lot. Also, Miranda seemed to be doing better with her allergies, so that was terrific. We made hobo dinners. I didn’t think they turned out well (large portions of mine were burnt to a crisp), but the girls and Dan said that they were good. I tried a hash browns hack – dried hash browns that come in a milk carton kind of container. You pour hot water on them and they stand for 12 min, then you cook them. I used those instead of chopping potatoes, and that did seem to cut down on our cooking time. We also made pies – using a pie iron, white bread, fruit filling, butter and powdered sugar – as Brenna said, definitively, “There’s nothing healthy about these.” But boy, they’re tasty. THOSE turned out great!

Cataract Falls

Cataract Falls pano

One of my goals this summer is to explore Indiana a little more. I’ve lived here for years, and I’ve seen some of the big attractions – the Dunes, Clifty Falls, the Children’s Museum. . .  But I really should know more about the state than I do! Some of this is driven by the fact that it’s the 200th anniversary of Indiana as a state, and some is driven by the fact that my school filter is always saying, What if I teach… fourth grade and Indiana History? Must. Be. Prepared.

We went to Cataract Falls this weekend and it was a fun family jaunt. It’s about an hour and twenty minutes southwest of Indianapolis, and what we THOUGHT was going to happen was that we were going to park the car, hike through a forest, and end up at the falls. We would eat lunch, play in the water a little bit, and then hike back.

Cataract Falls Girls

We had to laugh at ourselves when we pulled up and there were the Falls! an easy stroll from the car. We climbed down among the rocks and walked through Owen County’s only covered bridge to get to the other side of the falls… and drove through some greenery to get to the other part of the falls. There might be some hiking trails that we didn’t see, to be fair. And it was totally worth it, just funny to have our expectations changed.

Sandy Dan Sean

We tried to talk my mother-in-law into going, based on it being such an easy walk to a place overlooking the Falls, but she declined. Maybe another time!

We did take Sandy, our dog, who loved it. I thought he’d be worn out afterwards – we were all worn out afterwards, as it was 91 degrees, but Sandy was all fired up and ready for more, once he had a little air conditioning break on the way back home.