Mystery Cave

The forecast today was for storms on and off so I dug deep into the 'want to' list to find us something to do. We went down to very SE Minnesota to one of the limestone caves. A quick call to my dad and he decided to join us.
Let me just admit up front that this was a bad idea. The drive was too long. The interesting parts were over her head. And a cave is one place where toddlers are forbidden from touching anything. As I said, a bad idea.
The first (extra) problem that we ran into was a bit of road construction and poor detour signage. That tacked on at least an extra half hour of driving. Possibly worse than that, Relia lost confidence that we actually knew where the cave was. Dad tried to smooth things over by asking her if she was ready to go 'spelunking'. She was adamantly against the whole idea of spelunking and insisted on going to the cave.
We finally got there after some dirt roads. Relia was happy when we got back to pavement or 'clean' roads. The entrance is tucked into a beautiful little valley which you reach after passing through a brief forest. Almost a postcard location. We arrived a full five minutes before the tour was ready to leave. It wasn't nearly enough time but we made it.
I warned her that she wouldn't be able to touch anything in the cave. The guide opened up the tour by repeating this point. He said we had oil on our hand that would hurt the rocks. Relia looked at her hand and said, "I have oil?". I told her that it was natural. I had it and so did Pop-pop. A moment later she held up her other hand and said, "Two oils!".
Inside didn't really go that smoothly. She didn't understand the formations. She was tired and wanted to be held but only by me. Increasingly, she became upset when the guide would stop to show us things. "Keep moving!" In her favor, she didn't touch the walls or the ceiling even once. Which is pretty amazing considering how arbitrary that rule must have seemed.
The cave is interesting. If you're thinking of a cave trip, it's a pretty good choice. The website is here if you want times and descriptions. Turquoise Lake was particularly beautiful.
And I should also note that Relia was better behaved than the other toddler on the trip who yelled for most of the second half. It just isn't a good choice for the real youngin's. Or we both chose nap time. Either way, please let this serve as a cautionary trip.

But maybe next year...