The Traveling Widower

Tag: travel

Caving Part IV – Spiraling down

OK, after three caverns, there really is nothing new in terms of features to see. The last one (Lake Shasta) covered them all, and had a light show to boot. Hard to beat that, so why do anymore of these? Well, this one has something unique – a 170 step spiral staircase, built from parts of a famous WWI/WWII battleship, and the second largest cavern in the state. That and the fact that I want to complete the top 5 caverns in Northern California…maybe there’s some kind of award for that. Probably not. Maybe I’ll make my own t-shirt, like I did for half dome. Or not.

The Moaning Cavern is located between Murphy’s and Angels Camp in Calaveras County, if you know the area. It’s about a 2 hour drive from home. For this trip, I found a partner in crime, only after promising to visit a winery afterwards for lunch and vino. Some folks are easy to bribe.

Anxious spelunkers

This is another touristy tour – they offer two varieties. The Spiral Tour just covers the main cavern, reached via the staircase, and nothing more once you reach the bottom. The Adventure tour is more like real spelunking, through a well established route. No lighting or paths – all crawling and climbing. It sounds interesting, but not for my 73 year old body. Been there, done that, don’t need to prove anything to myself or anyone else. Now get off my lawn. So yes, we are doing the former, not the latter.

Cave Map – very large cave, very little of which was seen on tour

Much like all the other caverns, gold miners found it, and once they realized it was limestone and there ain’t no gold in them thar rocks, some of them decided they could make a buck giving mine tours. For this one, it has an entry which leads down to a really, really big empty space – you can fit the Statue of Liberty in there with room to spare. The only way down was to rappel from a ledge. Fun for some, but not conducive for large groups of non-climbers. I’ve rappelled that far in my rock climbing day’s…I’m not interested anymore. At any rate, an owner came up with a bright idea – the US Navy was modernizing some of the WW1 battleships which had these big “birdcage” towers for the rear (or main) mast, which had an observation/control room on top. These cylindrical towers were the perfect size to go from bottom to top of this enormous room. Just add a spiral staircase inside the cylinder and you have an easy way to get in and out the cavern (10 stories worth of stairs). Brilliant. They did also offer visitors the opportunity to rappel down for a while….they have a photo of Tom Hanks doing it. Glad he survived.

A side note here – this particular battleship mast came from a famous ship – the USS Maryland. She was one of the survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, where 6 out of 8 battleships from the Pacific Fleet were sunk. The Maryland was inboard of the USS Oklahoma which capsized – it was relatively lightly damaged by bombs.

Model of the USS Maryland – you can see the rear tower mast

So, on to the cave. It’s vacation time in the West, so we had a fairly large tour group, with a lot of kids. We managed to get to the head of the crowd, so did not have to deal with kid-jams on the long staircase down. You first have a few stories worth of steep steps in narrow passages – these lead to a landing at the head of the spiral stairs. An amazing view when you see how vast this cavern is. Once we were all gathered, I turned on the GoPro, and headed down the stairs. I forgot to mention – this time around, I carried my phone, my Sony DSLR and I wore a chest mount harness for my GoPro camera. I looked like a total geek. Well, more than I usually do.

This was a very strange experience – the tower is right next to one wall, so you are getting up close and personal views of the cave formations as you spiral down. The stairs are well spaced and not too small, so it was an easy “hike” down to the bottom. Once you get to the bottom, the view from the bottom up was pretty amazing.

Looking out from the cage

The Tower

The tour does not go any further – the guide describes all the features for a half hour, takes photos of each group which you can buy (no thanks), and then does a demonstration of what you are able to see with just a candle. Basically nothing. We did the same thing in one of the other caverns. There were a number of interesting features but quite frankly, the highlight is tower. The guide did point out some of the holes that the “Adventure Tour” crawls through. That pretty much confirmed my decision to pass on it. Here’s a few feature shots:

The Alien

So after the candle light display, the guide told us to head back up and out. Not wanting to wait behind all the kids, I got to the stairs first, turned on the GoPro again and headed up. It was not that tough a climb – I need to let my cardiologist know that I did what amounts to a stress test without any problems. The photos below are two of the narrow, steep stairs going from the platform back up to the entrance. This is not a natural passage – it was blasted out to avoid the straight drop from the top.

And for the fun of it, here is my video of the climb up from the bottom (two of them actually). It’s a bit long but interesting to watch.

The long and winding road (going up)

Since the tour was relatively short, and we were surrounded by wineries, my friend an I found a nice one to visit (Hatcher Winery), sampled some wines, and headed into Murphy’s for a nice lunch before heading back home. Overall, a very pleasant day. The cave was worth visiting to experience the spiral staircase, and to see the huge cavern room which had some interesting features. And we did get some good exercise going up and down.

Since I have such an incredible wealth of knowledge on tourist caving now, here are my does and don’ts when going on one of these cavern tours:

1 – Wear comfortable walking shoes, preferably light hiking half-boots. Most of the tours involve climbing steep, narrow stairs, and even the well paved trails can be wet and slippery. Sandals, flip-flops and Crocs may lead to slipping, and possibly wet and muddy feet.
2 – Check the Website to find out what the cavern temperature and humidity is and dress appropriately. That can change depending on the season. Some of the caves are quite chilly and damp. Shorts seem to be OK except for the ones with narrow passages – you could wind up with dirty legs/dirty pants. Be prepared.
3 – If you bring a camera (other than a phone), make sure it’s tethered to your body with a strap. And try to avoid leaning over railing with your phone to take pictures. One of the caverns had a case filled with camera’s, phones, GoPro’s and all kinds of stuff that visitors drop, and they only clean these places out once in a while. If you drop it, you will not get it back. Carrying a heavy DSLR is also problematic in caves with narrow passages or low overhangs – it’s difficult protecting your camera and your body at the same time.
4 – Most of the tours do a lights-out experience somewhere along the way – it can be frightening for adults, and terrifying for little kids. Make sure they are ready for it and you are holding on to them.
5 – And most important of all, especially for old folks like me, hit the bathroom just before you start the tour!. There’s no place “to go” once you are down there.

My next trip will be the Mercer Cavern, just outside of Murphy’s and more like California Cavern. Since I’ll be in Murphy’s, I can also check out the Big Tree State Park…it’s above ground and has groves of giant sequoia trees. A nice change. And unfortunately, while doing some Google searches on other things to do in California, I discovered yet another cave to visit. Sigh. Once you get started with caves, it’s hard to stop. Sort of like snacking from a large bag of M&M’s. This latest cavern is in the Mojave Desert, so visiting this summer is not an option. The tour requires a .75 mile hike along a narrow trail from the visitor center to the entry, and the cave does have some low and very narrow passages, but the photos they have on the Website are beautiful, so I have added this one to my list. A real adventure in the fall, sometime between my Alaska and Antarctica trips. I have to consider whether I really need any more adventures in between two major ones. I got time to think about it.

If you are interested in visiting this cavern, here is the Website: https://moaningcaverns.com/

July 9, 2025
Caving, Part III: Many steps and a light show

I was starting to think that the old saying of “Once you’ve seen xxxxx, you’ve seen them all” applied to cave tours, but this one had a few twists and turns (pun intended) which sets it apart. First of all, the Lake Shasta Cavern is…on a lake. On the side without a road. So you have to take a boat to get there. And the entry is on the side of a mountain. So you have to take a bus up a very narrow road to get to the entrance. And the entrance is at the lower level of a fairly large cavern so you spend a lot of time going up steep stairs, cut in very narrow passages. Don’t go there if you are claustrophobic.

Ok, seriously, this is a major tourist attraction in the Lake Shasta recreation area, and the operation is geared towards much larger groups than the two local caverns I have posted about. The grounds on the I-5 side of the lake includes a nice visitors center, a large play area for kids (with a very large gold panning thing….they all seem to have this), and a long, steep path down to the lakeshore where the boats leave.

The boats are nice, large covered pontoon crafts, which ferry you across to a landing on the other side – they run every half hour since they stagger groups, unlike the smaller operations.

They also have an old WWII landing craft that is used to ferry equipment and fuel across to the cavern. They bought it in a government auction in the 50’s, and it turns out to be a survivor from the Normandy landings. Pretty cool. I did not see any bullet holes.

Once you get to the other side, they pile everyone into a bus, to get up the very narrow, steep, winding road (with sheer drop-offs) to the mini-visitor center up top (with bathrooms!). From there, a guide gathers the group up, and in you go.

This was not a natural entrance – the real entrance is a few hundred feet up the hill. To make life easier for tourists, they cut a new passage into the lower level. Thank you for that.

This is a very large cave, and the tour covers a lot of ground, All of it going up a series of stairs cut into the floor. All the passages and stopping points have either concrete or hard packed surfaces, which makes walking easy. They also have handrails throughout the touring areas. Best of all, there was only one place where you had to watch for a low hanging stalactite – I did not have to duck anywhere in the cave. Thanks again for that.

Nice path with hand-rail lights

Most..make that…all of the features are the same as in the other caves – just more of them, and some of the rooms were fair sized. They also just completed an upgrade to the lighting in the cave, with LED’s in most of the railings, so you could see where you are stepping. There are a lot of steps – one steep passage had 80+ steps. And the steps were cut for small feet – it’s always a challenge for my size 13 gunboats.

So many steps

The tour was fast paced, and I did not take quite that many photographs until the end. There’s that saying again – how many photographs for the same types of features do I need. Until the last room, which was spectacular. I should note that the guide was excellent – there were stops at the five rooms we visited, where she discussed the features, and a lot about the history of the caverns. Very interesting. And there were even benches to rest on in. A few places – a nice feature after walking up 3 or 4 stories of steep steps. Here are a couple of shots from the different rooms that we toured:

The high-lite of the tour was this last room – a light show, set to music!!! It was actually quite good, but one couple brought two young kids along, and the boy screamed through the entire presentation. Kind of ruined the moment. But it was still pretty cool – here’s a short clip. This is a family oriented vacation stop, so they have to handle adults and small children. There was also a woman with a very small service dog….which she had to hold through the entire tour. Whatever.

A surprising light show

After the light show, we were told to head out the last passage, which led out to yet another series of small steps, going back down to the starting point. I had tired knees at that point. And once the boat dropped us off on the other side, it was yet another climb back up to the visitor center and the car. Sigh. Fortunately, you can either take the direct route – stairs, or use the switchback path. I chose the latter.

Walk to the light!

I did not need to go to the gym when I got home later in the afternoon (3+ hour drive) – I got enough of a workout on the cave stairmaster. While this one is a lot more “touristy”, it was definitely worthwhile for me, even with the long drive – the cave was beautiful, and it was definitely a unique experience with the boat ride and multi-level cavern. It was also the first time I’ve ventured this far North in California, and found a bunch of other places I’d like to visit.

I now have two more left in my underground California tour – one near Angels Camp, and the other close by in Murphy’s. I could theoretically do another overnight trip and get them both, but since it’s not too far from home, I’ll do two separate trips. After that, I’m through with caves – my summer bucket list keeps growing, and I’d want to hit some of these before I leave for Alaska. I looked at a lot of literature about the Mt. Lassen National Park, and may add that to my list, probably in early August.

If you are interested in visiting the cavern, here’s their website: https://www.lakeshastacaverns.com/

July 2, 2025