Post by jonsdigs on Oct 20, 2006 18:56:03 GMT -5
Inside Pennsylvania: Touring the Stalactite Circuit
By DAVE CALDWELL
Published: October 13, 2006
The New York Times
photo by Susana Raab for The New York Times
ROCK SHOWS Kris Van Deventer, an owner of Coral Caverns, gives a tour with her young son, Max.
NO more than 10 minutes into our 20-minute tour of Coral Caverns, near the hamlet of Manns Choice in central Pennsylvania, our teenage guide recited in a midafternoon monotone that the fossils garnishing a reddish cave wall were creatures on an ocean floor some 410 million years ago.
New York Times Graphic
Minutes later, she noted that stalactites grow (if you want to call it growing) from the cave ceiling at about one cubic inch every hundred years. She used these statistics to remind us that the cave had been around a lot longer than we had. She was bumming me out.
There is nothing like a cave to make a person feel truly mortal, as fleeting as the wind. The delicate yet ancient formations in a cave make the mind spin like a dog chasing its tail; and stalactites are mere babies compared with the fossils.
At the same time, there is nothing like a cave to cause a puny human to marvel at earth’s grandeur. A person who wanders into a dark, cool cave can peek at (but not touch) exotic geological forms that seem spawned at the beginning of time.
Ribbed by the Allegheny Mountains, Pennsylvania has nine so-called show caves, caves with lights, steps and gravel-covered passageways so that people can take guided tours; the state is tied with South Dakota for third most in the country, after Missouri (16) and California (11).
For the same reason that Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest, my girlfriend, Dena, my 8-year-old son, Danny, and I recently toured six of the Pennsylvania nine in two whirlwind days. We probably could have ducked into all nine, but we had to drive 250 miles from North Jersey to get to our first stop, Coral Caverns. We lost even more time because we practically needed a spelunker to find Coral Caverns, which has few signs pointing the way. We finally found the entrance, taking a gravel back road that ran past a rusted-out railroad car to the office, which looked more like a cabin than a place of business.
Full Article:
travel2.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/travel/escapes/13caves.html?ref=travel
By DAVE CALDWELL
Published: October 13, 2006
The New York Times
photo by Susana Raab for The New York Times
ROCK SHOWS Kris Van Deventer, an owner of Coral Caverns, gives a tour with her young son, Max.
NO more than 10 minutes into our 20-minute tour of Coral Caverns, near the hamlet of Manns Choice in central Pennsylvania, our teenage guide recited in a midafternoon monotone that the fossils garnishing a reddish cave wall were creatures on an ocean floor some 410 million years ago.
New York Times Graphic
Minutes later, she noted that stalactites grow (if you want to call it growing) from the cave ceiling at about one cubic inch every hundred years. She used these statistics to remind us that the cave had been around a lot longer than we had. She was bumming me out.
There is nothing like a cave to make a person feel truly mortal, as fleeting as the wind. The delicate yet ancient formations in a cave make the mind spin like a dog chasing its tail; and stalactites are mere babies compared with the fossils.
At the same time, there is nothing like a cave to cause a puny human to marvel at earth’s grandeur. A person who wanders into a dark, cool cave can peek at (but not touch) exotic geological forms that seem spawned at the beginning of time.
Ribbed by the Allegheny Mountains, Pennsylvania has nine so-called show caves, caves with lights, steps and gravel-covered passageways so that people can take guided tours; the state is tied with South Dakota for third most in the country, after Missouri (16) and California (11).
For the same reason that Sir Edmund Hillary climbed Everest, my girlfriend, Dena, my 8-year-old son, Danny, and I recently toured six of the Pennsylvania nine in two whirlwind days. We probably could have ducked into all nine, but we had to drive 250 miles from North Jersey to get to our first stop, Coral Caverns. We lost even more time because we practically needed a spelunker to find Coral Caverns, which has few signs pointing the way. We finally found the entrance, taking a gravel back road that ran past a rusted-out railroad car to the office, which looked more like a cabin than a place of business.
Full Article:
travel2.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/travel/escapes/13caves.html?ref=travel