Moaning Caverns is a solutional cave located in the Calaveras County, California. It is developed in marble of the Calaveras Formation. It was discovered in modern times by gold miners in 1851, but it has long been known as an interesting geological feature by prehistoric peoples. It gets its name from the moaning sound that echoed out of the cave luring people to the entrance, however expansion of the opening to allow access for the public disrupted the sounds. The portion of the cave developed for tourists consists of a spacious vertical shaft 165 feet tall, which is descended by a combination of stairs and a unique 100-foot-high spiral staircase built in the early 1900s.
Moaning Caverns is home to the largest single cave chamber in California. The massive room reaches over 180 feet before funneling into smaller passageways. With a 20-30 foot thick ceiling, the open area inside the chamber is, in fact, tall enough to hold the Statue of Liberty (pedestal excluded). There is only one natural entrance into the chamber in the form of a 30-foot vertical chimney dropping into the center of the room. This does make commercial entry a little difficult so dynamite was used in the mid 1800s to expand a natural crack in the ground wide enough for stairs to be built down. The narrow wooden staircase ends at a flat platform 65 feet underground. From there, a ten story spiral staircase leads down to a second platform at the base of the chamber.
The Spiral Tour takes the stairs all the way to the floor of the chamber, 165 feet below the visitors center, on a 45-minute informative trip.
We all ventured down the wooden staircase to the first platform, but that's where Connor and I stayed. We both have a fear of heights and the open spiral staircase was a bit much. Although I wanted to venture to the very bottom and probably would have despite my fears, Connor was frozen with fear and a bit queasy. So, we stayed at the top platform along with several other people, while Jason carried Kaiden down the spiral staircase with the other people on the tour. At one point they turned all the lights off in the cave and really freaked Connor out. Once the lights came back on we went back up to the top and exited the cave.
Afterwards we played on the climbing wall. Unfortunately Kaiden was too small to climb. We took turns racing to the top of the 32-foot custom climbing tower.
We ended the night at Marble Quarry RV park. We played in their pool, which was freezing cold, BBQ'ed dinner, went for a short gravel/dirt bike ride in the woods- where Jason was goofing off and flipped his bike over and then we got attacked by mosquito's and had to retreat back to our camp spot. Then Jason used You-tube to figure out how to fix our engine problem, which turned out to be a hose that just came loose and needed to be cleaned out to fix a sensor. In the process of Jason fixing our engine he misplaced his screw driver and spent several hours frustrated and we all had to turn the RV upside down searching for his screw driver that he insisted that I moved somewhere. This was the only time during this entire trip that we had any confrontations though. The boys never argued or fought. Jason and I didn't argue or fight. We were all happy and got along perfect, with the exception of Jason's little frustration event with the misplaced screw driver. Jason is truly amazing. He reminds me of my father in the aspect that he can fix anything. When we decided to get 4-wheelers for the family, Jason (who had never worked on an engine before) taught himself how to tear an engine apart and repair it. When we bought a 20 year old motor home with old brittle plumbing, Jason figured out how to tear all the old plumbing out, replace it with newer better materials, reroute the lines and he installed an outdoor shower (which we didn't have to begin with). I'm a very lucky woman to have 2 incredibly talented, smart, creative men in my life, who can design, build and repair ANYTHING! I hope both my boys inherited the "genius" gene from their father and grandpa. (Jason likes to refer to himself as a "genius" when he gets a creative idea... and sometimes I have to agree. He can be pretty ingenious).
