Oregon Caves Ntnl Monument
I’ve been to so many other caves already, what makes this one any different? Yep, I admit it. I nearly backed out of going to Oregon Caves. Without Kerri, I may have done exactly that – once again. I’ve driven past it multiple times in the past, opting to skip it for that same reason above. But this time I finally made the short day-trip up to Oregon Caves Ntnl Monument. Everything Kerri found online said that reservations for a tour was a smart move, but we could not get a tour reservation booked online. We risked it and made the drive up the mountain anyway. At least we would take a hike of nothing else. Luckily, once we got up to the visitor’s center we were able to get in on the very next cave tour.
Normally nether of us are fans of guided tours; the Ranger rattles off a script of facts meant to entertain children more than anything, and the lengths of the tours are way too long. But in this case Kerri and I both agreed that it was one of the best guided tours of a cave we have ever been on. Our guide, a young Ranger and Geologist, taught us so much more about caves in the short time she had our attention than all the other tours combined. She kept it educational yet entertaining while keeping us moving along nearly the entire time.
And the cave itself was quite different than all the others we have been too. It had the standard stalactites and stalagmites and all that cave-stuff . But the real cool part was that it has a river running through it – the River Styx (I know, right?). The river makes it a very cold 40-something degrees inside. That is much colder than the other caves I’ve visited. The inside itself was very tight, with a lot of near-crawling and shuffling around the features. Our group was only 12 or so people, and many stops we could barely fit us all into an opening so the Ranger could tell us about the area. 
The portion we toured was not large in length, but we did climb some 500 steps over the course of the 3/4 mile or so distance. Starting at the visitor’s center, we exited the cave 200+ feet higher and a third of a mile away. We had the option to hike straight back to Big Blue and continue don with our day, but instead we chose to continue our visit by following the longer trail back to the van. This trail brought us around the other side and up top of the mountain-top that the cave is below. For the extra effort it rewarded us with a kick ass view of the whole valley below.
