Maquoketa Caves

Since last winter, Sarah and I have planned tentatively to visit a state park in northeastern Iowa called Maquoketa because of the caves it is known for. After some relief from the very warm end of the Iowa summer, and possibly from a recent motivation we've gotten to camp, we finally made the trip this weekend. We got there a little late on Friday night and found one campsite left, waiting just for us. It was a very pleasant, windless, clear, and comfortably cool evening to sit around a fire.

We explored the caves on Saturday. Neither of us quite knew what to expect. Apart from three large interconnected openings with one or two small offshooting tunnels, the other dozen or so caves in the park were not connected and went from ten feet into a hill to about fifty feet deep; some had rooms large enough to stand up in, others were much more cramped. Crawling on your belly was necessary for several of them, if the caver was up for the tight fit. Sarah and I were game and were filthy at the end of the afternoon. I also crouched through one opening with a shin-deep stream coming down it later in the afternoon. In one such moist area, we were puzzled by the walls seeming to glitter around us. After closer looks, we realized it was from condensation on the walls in the form of speck-sized droplets. No pictures would have given those rooms justice, and will simply have to be experienced and remembered.

Unlike Lewis and Clark Caverns' guided tours with restricted access to it's upper and lower openings, these caves were wide open to the general public and always have been. This was reflected on the park by its well-traveled feel and lack of geological growth in the caves; foolish souvenir hunters robbed the place clean of stalactites and stalagmites years ago. Nonetheless, we were glad to have experienced them.

We drove through Davenport to get to Maquoketa, so we had planned on stopping by there on the way back. Sarah went to St Ambrose College in Davenport, so she showed me the campus and around town.

Sunday morning we woke up to rain, which was absolutely welcome, especially since didn't need to rely on a campfire to cook our breakfast. Another adventure accomplished!