Sunday, October 19, 2008

Hiking to Timpanogos Cave

I've lived in Utah County since I first came to BYU in 1988, but I had never hiked to Timpanogos Cave until today. I'm not sure where the inspiration came from. I was doing housework on Friday and realized "Hey - our family hasn't hiked to the cave" and suddenly, we were driving up American Fork Canyon on Saturday afternoon.

Unfortunately, you have to have a ticket to get in the cave and the lady standing right in front of me bought the last four tickets for the last tour of the day. We were all a little stunned. The kind ranger said, "Well, we're open tomorrow and it's the last day of the season." So....we decided Sunday afternoon was the day for us.

It was a tough hike - 1.5 miles of switchbacks up the side of the mountain. My mom came with us and felt every painful step, but she and all of us made it to the cave mouth just in time for the tour. This cave is incredible! We spent an hour walking underground through three caves that have thousands of stalagtites and stalagmites and "cave bacon" and "straws" and all sorts of weird stuff. We crawled through the narrowest crevices to get from one cave to the next, crouching low in some spots so we wouldn't hit our heads and hiking up long flights of stairs in other parts.

It was a pretty cool day and a neat experience! If you're ever in Utah County, I highly recommend it.

2 comments:

Heather said...

I wish we could have come with you but hearing the story it would have been terrible with Taryn. I am glad mom survived. Thank you for the fun night yesterday. The kids loved every minute.

Lori said...

Next time we are in Utah, we will have to check this out. I love hiking and exploring!