CAVES!!!

Its kind of a tradition in my family to go check out any caves that are in an area that we are visiting on vacation.  When we moved here to West Virginia there are two touring caves within 20 minutes of where we live.  One of them is the 2nd longest cave on the East side of the country.  We had family in town this weekend so we went and checked them out. 

This particular cave not only had the cool stalagmites and stalactites but also had a lot of history with the civil war.  The Confederate soldiers used materials that came from the cave to make 95% of their ammunition and were able to stay hidden from the Union soldiers for months.

  These are pictures of the original hoppers that the soldiers used to get the material out of the dirt.  There are 16 tons of dirt in one of those!

Here are a couple of shots of some of the things in the cave.

My daughter is 4 and enjoyed seeing everything, if she was a little older I would have talked to her more about how these were created and the process.  

Look around and see if there are any caves to check out, it's worth it!!