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After Dinner it was time to return Chad to his car. It was snowing a bit by then. And a lot of blowing snow as well. So it wasn't the quickest trip in the world. Chad and I chatted and blabbed on the way. I stopped near the beginning at a hotel to pick up brocures and a gas station to get gas. Then we were off and I got him to his car OK and he headed home. Then I headed back to the B&B.
I decided though to take a detour past the random spot again. Just for the heck of it. And also specifically to the 25 mile from the spot spot, because I had neglected to note what the closest town was in both those places. So I went back to that spot. Noted the closest town. (Cardington at 25 miles, Richwood at 0 miles.) Then I headed back to the B&B through the strongly drifiting snow.
When I finally got back, I was pretty tired. So even though it was early, I got ready for bed right away.
And immediately slept 10 hours straight.
In the morning after getting up and doing the normal morning things, I went downstairs for breakfast. In addition to myself, there was one couple there. They were very quiet. We sat down to eat. After a little awkward silence, I tried to say hi to them. Only the woman spoke. She answered each of my questions with single sentence or less answers. I managed to get out of them their names (although I immediately forgot) and the fact they were there on their honeymoon. They did not look happy. The woman answered my questions, but that was about it. The man looked downright groucy and angry. It seemed like I was perhaps in the middle of an argument, and the only reason these two weren't yelling at each other was that I was there. Well, glad to be of service on their honeymoon. Good luck to them both. We finished our breakfasts in silence, and I got out of there as quickly as I could manage.
So the plan for the day was for me to call Chad once I was up (but not too early) and then figure out what all we wanted to do. Chad's thought was that in the afternoon I'd go over to his place and we'd vist the Air Force Museum in Dayton, then after that he was having a Poker game at his place with a bunch of his friends. I had tentatively agreed to this plan. I had also seen in one of the brochures that there were some caverns nearby that sounded like something I'd want to go to, but I could do that the next day.
But there was one difficulty. The blowing snow from the night before had increaded and increased, and today it was a full blown blizzard. The TV in the B&B (from Columbus) was all talking about how nobody should travel unless they didn't have to, and various counties were in various levels of alert ranging from just "be careful when traveling" to "you will be arrested if you are on the road". The county Marysville was in, Union County, was just in the "be careful" category, but where Chad was, and most of the places in between, were in the "you will be arrested" category.
So, when talking to Chad, I asked him to check the Museum, and see if it was open. I'd check in with him again around lunchtime to see what was up.
Then I went to the B&B's handy computer room.
I tried their computer for a little while, but since I had my own laptop, in a few minutes I settled into the other lounge side of the room.
I plugged into the phone jack they provided, which was nice, and started to do some computer stuff. I of course caught up on email, but I also downloaded the pictures I had taken so far, and started working on the website for the trip.
When lunchtime did come around, I called Chad. He had not called to check to see if the museum was open. So I hung up with him, got online, looked up the phone number and called. They were closed due to the weather.
So I called back Chad. No museum today. Instead today I would go to the caves, which were northwest of where I was, and were all in the "drive carefully" regions. When I got back from that I'd call Chad about the poker.
So I left. It had been plowed, but it was a grey day, with blowing snow everywhere. Things were slippery, even here in town. But you could tell why it was just a "be careful" county.
The other counties on TV looked much much worse.
As I headed off toward Zane caverns, one of several sets of caverns in the area I decided to head toward, the conditions did get worse. Not so much the weather itself, but just roads that were barely plowed, or where blowing drifts came right accross the road. When I finally got near Zane Caverns, I barely noticed it as anything. There was a small sign, off a not that big road, saying the caverns were off to the left. Near the entrance there was someone on a plow. I rolled down my window and asked if they were open. Yup. So I headed down about a half mile down the twisty driveway, and finally got to the main building for the cavern entrance.
Going inside, it was pretty clear I was the only customer. There was a small little gift shop, a couple people behind the counter, and a map of the cavern painted on wood in the back.
The caverns were owned and operated by the Shawnee Nation and are located on their land.
After I had indicated that I was here for the tour, the woman manning the desk sent the other one, who was perhaps her child, upstairs to get the tour guide to tell him to stop what he was doing, there was someone who wanted a tour. I would later find out that during this part of the year, they tended to get one person or group looking for a tour about every two weeks. Not that busy of a location I guess. Especially during a blizzard.
After a few minutes my guide came down. I really should learn to take notes and write things like names down. I am very very bad with names. I do not remember my guide's name. But for the purposes of this story, I will call him Mark. I'm calling him Mark, because he reminded me a lot of Mark Yeck, I guy I knew at WRCT back at Carnegie Mellon.
So, after telling me a bit about the cave by pointing things out on the map, we headed down into the entrance, dodging around huge icicles on the floor and ceiling.
Once we were down in the cave, almost immediately, Mark pointed out that we were not alone.
All the bats were hibernating for the winter. Well, all but one, who buzzed us a little later. But for the most part, every dozen feet or so through the cave, you could see one or a few bats sleeping attached to the wall, much as this one was. They wouldn't be waking up until the spring.
So next Mark showed me this nest of eggs thing.
This is apperantly a very rare sort of geologic formation. This cave is one of only a very few that has this sort of thing. Somehow dripping water from above causes these little egg shaped things instead of other more common forms. MArk explained several theories about it, but I was playing with my camera, so I didn't catch the whole thing.
There was a big behive looking thing too.
There were a few places where it got pretty tight, and we had to duck to make it through to the next chamber.
And there were some very nicely lit underground pools.
That look pretty different innormal light...
The point was that the pool only looked to be a few inches deep, but was really a few feet deep. One of those optical illusion things.
Then after we left the pool Mark started checking out the ceiling. He pointed out a crack in the roof.
You can see it there. The large block right above the passageway, bowing downward, with a nice crack in the middle. Mark indicated that crack was new in the previous couple of months, and the ceiling was noticibly lower (an inch or two) than when he did his last tour about a month earlier. Oh good. That makes me feel safe. They were watching this area Mark said. Good. Have fun with that.
So we continued on. There was a little "city" of drippy formations.
There were scary creature looking drippy formations...
And something that looked like a fried egg...
A pipe organ looking formation...
Another drippy city with an owl in it...
And this thing was supposed to look like a chess piece...
Or something.
And then that was the end. We poked up at the other end of the cave which was in a little shack. I was offered the choice to go back through the cave, or to trudge through the foot and a half of snow (no path) back to the place we started. I said I didn't mind either way, and Mark picked going through the snow. So we trudged back to entrance building. I said goodbye to Mark, and headed on my way back to the B&B.
Heading back on the roads, it was worse than when I had come to the cave, but still not too horrible.
There was blowing snow everywhere, and sometimes visibility was bad, but it was still pretty drivable. At least here.
Even on the bigger roads though (a US route) it was pretty messy though. And the drifting snow made really neat patterns on the road. I like patterns.
Then I got back to the B&B.
The snow was starting to accumulate more, and it was getting heavier.
I checked the TV news. It was supposed to get worse and worse all night. The area where I was would continue to get less than to the South, but still a lot. And the area Chad was in was in a "You will be Arrested if you are on the Road" mode. Given that I already had a broken tail light, it just didn't seem like the best of ideas to go driving into the maw of a blizzard. So I called Chad and said I would not be making the Poker game.
Instead I settled in to watch the snow coming down outside through the window.
So, nice and warm inside, I got myself all comfy, and worked on the trip website for a few hours until Day 4 finished dripping through the hourglass.
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