Hi! It's Birdie here to tell you about a field trip that the whole school took, plus two exchange students (a.k.a Me, Mom, and two friends)! It was so cool. We went to the Olentagy Indian Caverns. First, after we got there, we looked around the gift shop while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive (we went there with our co-op). Once everyone was there, we all meandered on down a path to a small building. Then we waited for a tour guide to arrive and unlock the door. Once she came, we entered the building. It was like a mini museum with a bunch of geodes and fossils and arrowheads that were found in the caverns, plus a big timeline telling when any remotely historically important people entered the cave, whether looking for a lost cow, or performing an execution.
Then, after looking around for about 10-15 minutes, we rounded a small corner, and there standing before us was a set of steep, narrow steps. We walked down them, turned on the landing, and there, before us, was another set of narrow steps. So we went down, and down, and down; 69 steps in total. And in those 69 steps, we went down 1/4 of a mile (told you they were steep)! (Mom’s note: we did go down 1/4 mile total, but we went down further once we reached the cavern.) Then we came to the actual caverns. We went through the left passage (it forked here) and then another left at the next fork. Then we walked along the passageway until we reached yet another fork! The left fork was boarded up, because there were still a whole bunch of rocks and tons upon tons of mud in there.
Then our guide pointed out some interesting rock formations, one in the shape of an Indian chief, one in the shape of a 15-foot long canoe, and one in the shape of a bear (well, not exactly because the formations were made naturally, but bear with me and use your imagination). The Indian chief in the wall is supposedly Chief Leather-Lips, called such (no, not because he needed some chap stick) because he never broke a promise, not even to save his own life. He was executed by Tecumseh at the mouth of the caverns because he refused to break his promise to the white men not to fight against them, and when Tecumseh came recruiting, Leather-Lips refused to join just to keep his promise.
Upon going though the right fork, it dead-ended in a small and cramped room that was called the "Crystal Chamber", even though there was hardly a crystal in sight. We stayed in there for a bit, then re-traced our steps back past the canoe, Leather-Lips, and the bear, and upon walking a little ways back through the passage, went through a tight little passage called "Fat-Man's Misery" into another dead ending room, this time much bigger. So much bigger in fact, it 's ceiling had caused the hill 1/4 of a mile above us!
After looking around for a bit and seeing some amazing fossils in the walls, we exited the huge chamber through another passage, and went back still farther along the first passage, going right past the stairs an into the right fork. After walking a little more, we entered another room, this time with a huge flat rock in the middle of the floor. There were two dead ending passages leading out from the room, so we were allowed to go "exploring" into them. The first one went about 15 feet, and then I ran into, you guessed it, a fork! The right fork was little more than a large crevice in the wall. The left fork was much more interesting, as it did not dead end, but kept going for who knows how long, but, from the floor to about waist level was solid rock, so the tunnel was barely enough room to crawl in. The second passage had very muddy, slippery, naturally formed "stepps"to get to it. It was just a big dead-ending room with a gargantuan stalagmite in the middle and a whole lot of puddles in it.
After everyone had walked around these two tunnels to their hearts content, we went back up those stairs, back through the museum, back up the path, an back into the gift shop, where I told the two "exchange students" that I had brought $20 with me and that I would buy them anything that they wanted under $5. As the older one only bought a $3 gemstone heart, and the younger one bought a pair of $6.50 earrings, and I bought 2 "Break Open Your Own Geodes" one for me and one for my friend who's birthday is coming up (she likes rocks a lot) that cost $4 each, so it all worked out. Then, since we were already in that area of town, we went and looked around the zoo for a while and saw some animals and on the way out mom splurged and got a bag of cotton candy! YUM! It was a really, really, really fun day.
