In our search for an interesting day trip, we decided to head northeast in search of caves, trails, and bats.
It was a beautiful day so we took out the convertible and looked for some back roads to enjoy the countryside. The drive was just gorgeous!
We stopped at this beautiful overlook in Grant County on Highway 79.
Then we headed on to Cathedral Caverns State Park. Although they were busy, we were able to get on a tour that left within 45 minutes of when we arrived. The tour is 90 minutes and takes you 3/4 of a mile into the cave past some really neat formations. Once the tour gets to the back of the cave, they let your return back at your own pace giving plenty of opportunity to take photos. It is really a neat tour.
This five-lined skink was hanging out outside the cave.
Shark's tooth in the ceiling of the cave - They originally thought there were 11 shark's teeth in the cave but recently geologists have discovered many more.
Goliath - one of the largest stalagmites in the world measuring at 45' tall and 243' in circumference.
a "frozen" waterfall
Cave Bacon
After our cave tour, we decided to check out one of the hiking trails on the property. The parking lot for the hiking trails is near the entrance of the park. Our first sign that these trails are very under-utilized (at least in August) should have been the empty parking lot. Regardless, we set out in search of birds, reptiles, flowers, and whatever wildlife we could find.
We took the brown loop.
This guy had made a web across the entire path - another sign the trails were very much under-utilized!
Can you find the frog?
This guy was just laying in the path waiting to greet us. I think it is a black rat snake.
Can you find the frog?
Can you find the frog?
We then headed to Scottsboro to look for some dinner and stop at Walmart for a cheap umbrella (to keep the bat guano off us when we went to our next cave). As we were driving through Scottsboro, we noticed signs for the Unclaimed Baggage Center. This is the only store in America that buys and sells unclaimed baggage (from airlines). Besides luggage they had rooms and rooms (in two different buildings) of clothes, electronics, books, household items, etc.
After dinner and a Walmart run in Scottsboro, we headed to Sauta Cave National Wildlife Refuge. It is an unstaffed park that can be a bit difficult to find. The cave is home to 250,000-400,000 gray bats each summer and many gray bats and Indiana bats hibernate there over the winter. To not disturb the bats and protect them from the white nose syndrome that is affecting bats around the country, the cave itself is closed. However, they have built a nice viewing platform for those that want to get a glimpse of the mass exodus that happens each night during the summer. The rest of the park is home to a lot of other wildlife.
While we were waiting for dusk to approach, we got a glimpse of an armadillo as well as deer.
armadillo
armadillo
The wait was well worth it. I really tried playing with the settings on my Nikon to try to get some photos of the bats. However, I was not successful. We got some interesting video on our iPhones and my husband, who loves slow motion video, took some footage that allowed me to take some okay screen shots which are below. We watched the bats for about half an hour before it started getting too dark to see very well.
Here are two videos we took. The first one is in real time. The second in slow motion.
