I love caves so I suggested to Denny about seeing this one. He is ho-hum about caves. His thinking "if you've see one, you've seen them all. What we had planned to do that day fell thru, so we ( I ) decided to go. Unfortunately it was a 60 mile backtrack but off we went. It turned out to be very interesting. Even Denny admitted it. It is the largest dry cave in the world. Of all the caves, only 3% are dry and only 1 1/2% are open to the public. We had to take an elevator 21 stories down. Thew walls are 65 million years old.
There are 3 very unusual facts about this cave. In a large room, about an acre, there are cases and cases of water and food. During the cold war, President Kennedy had this cave stocked to use as a bomb shelter. There are enough supplies to feed 2000 people for 2 weeks. Not sure what they expected to happen after that. The water is in black jugs, holding 18 gallons each. This is before bottled water. The food is still edible (YUK) because it is ,mostly saltine crackers and hard candy. Not sure what the reasoning for that was. Hard to sustain yourself on crackers and candy. That was in 1962. Everything is still down there. Nothing more had been delivered until last month. Several palettes of MRE's and bottled water came. More is suppose to be coming. The guide said that the cave was bought a few years ago by a survival doom & gloom company. Can't remember the name. If you went on their website and for a fee ( I'm sure it is ALOT of money), you can buy space in the cave in case the world comes to an end. I wonder if it is the group that has been predicting the end of the world, the last one being Oct. 12th.
The other interesting thing is that they have created a bedroom suite in the large room. It has a double bed, bath, lights, closets and TV. For $750 per 2 people, you can stay the night. They turn off all the lights in the cave except for 1 small one. There are lights in your bedroom suite also. The guide turned off all the lights to give us an idea about how dark it was. It was blacker than black. Very eerie. It is so quiet that you can hear yourself breathe. We don't think we could ever do that. He said about 200 people have done it. He said that about twice a summer season, the lights go out, usually because of storms. They have flashlights every so often. They are painted with glow in the dark paint so you can find them. I'm certainly glad that didn't happen when we were down there.
The bedroom suite
Long distance shot of the bedroom suite, looks kind of spooky to me!
Very dark but the cases on the right are the new bottled water. On the left are old boxes of crackers
The black buckets hold the old 1962 water. UGH
Another view of the new water
Last, there have been several weddings down there. Can't imagine doing that. Each couple left a little of their wedding there, flowers, parts of veil, etc. Everything is still in good shape because there is almost no humidity.
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