Rickwood Caverns State Park, Alabama

Beautiful Alabama Fall Colors

Grandeur takes many forms. This morning it is Rickwood Caverns camp ground outside of Jasper, Alabama a small town is outside of Birmingham. The date is November 4, 2017. This morning the sun came up over towering Alabama Pines and oaks dressed in their fall finest.  The fog muted the peaks of the trees with white mist. The sun shines rays through falling golden leaves while the squirrels and chipmunks playfully gather their snacks. Below the surface of this majestic display of fall lies a vast cavern with a maze of passage ways down to 125 feet below the falling leaves.  In the darkness of the cave live three creatures, tiny

Tiny Alabama Bat

little bats that sleep by themselves apart from each other, Alabama Cave Fish (white clear fish that live in the underground lake below) and Alabama cave crayfish.  The cave lake creatures wisely stay in the darkness and eluded us. The tiny bats however where here and there. These little furry are about the size of a small plum and hang upside down by themselves. They are solitary creatures and do not like each other until it is time to mate according to our young guide, Ashley.

Ashley has more than one juicy story to tell about Rickwood Caverns. Most of which could not be verified on the web. So in all likelihood is actually true. Ashley our guide was a delightful young lady named Ashley who wore 2 blond French braided pig tails. She was adorable and sweet and has a boyfriend in the Marine Corp. She explained that she always wore braids now because one time a bat flew into her hair and got stuck. She had to sling her hair around and it finally got it loose. She said screamed a lot at the time but now it was a funny story to tell.

At one time the cavern served as a fallout shelter and has stored barrels water purifiers and crackers from the 1960s. They are stored in large metal drums that are now rusted shut. The government had certified the cavern as a fallout shelter and at some point decided that there was no longer a need and un-certified it. The government came to get all the food and stuff out of there but the owners at that time did not want them to. It is unclear who paid for the food storage but in any case the owners of the land wasn’t about to give it up. They brought dirt in to the passage way so the containers would not fit through the opening from the underground storage room. Evidently the government gave up trying to get the food and it remains there to this day.

David & Kim in Rickwood Caverns

The Caverns themselves are stunning with stalactites and mites and sparkly gleaming limestone tunnels. (I half expected Gollum to surprise me around the next bend.) Someone had vandalized the cave before and the quartz crystal center of the stalactite could be plainly seen. It was glimmery and beautiful. Incredible that God put these just gems inside a brown pillar of limestone solidified mud.

The story goes that these two guys found this cave on a Boy Scout camping trip. It was owned by another who knew about the cave but didn’t do anything with it. These two Boy Scout masters decided to buy the land and open the caverns to the public.  They blasted part of the cavern to make it possible to walk all the way through it. The boy scouts helped clear the path and the tidy rock wall they made still decorates one of the walls of the cave.

Natural Cave Passage Way

Although a small part of the cave was defiled it still enjoys plenty of its original splendors such as cave drapery so thin that light can be seen through it. In meandering through the natural cave tunnel and keeping an eye out for the tiny bats hanging on the wall about 5 feet above the ground I hardly noticed why Ashley was stopping. On the left of the passageway my eyes had to adjust to what I was seeing. The passageway gave way to a side cavern filled by an underground lake. The water was so clear that I did not even see it at first. My eyes had to focus on what Ashley was saying. This was a vast underground lake! Divers had gone down one time and never reached the bottom. They only had so much air and light which forced them to turn back. The state did not allow another expedition siting that it was too dangerous. So no one knows exactly how big it really is. They suspect that it connects with other caverns. Ashley said that she had seen the little blind cave fish 7 times in the thousand or so times she had been to this cave lake. So the cave creatures do surface but no one seems to know much about these two life forms on the web. They do seem to be unique to this are because they are called the Alabama cave fish and Alabama cave crayfish.

We noticed a strange scent in the cave rather than the expected scent that we found in Carlsbad Caverns. Ashley said that they had given 75 school children a tour in the morning and that the caverns do not normally smell like that. The fragrance was not a wholly unpleasant combination of crayons and sweat. We had a good laugh.

At some point the one of the Boy Scout master owners had planned an underground burger joint. He had big plans for the place. He most like figured that he could make a fortune and he probably could have except that the he declared him insane and put in an institution and the land was then sold to the state. Alabama eventually turned it into a state park. Although our curiosity is peaked we were unable to verify what really happened to the poor fellow.

Along the path fossils can be seen clearly in the cavern tunnel walls. They are of some kind of extinct bug eating plants and sea shells. The whole area used to be a giant sea in prehistoric times.

There is a small but lovely camp ground at the caverns and a swimming pool that is open during the summer. The pool is supplied with water from the underground cave and some city water to warm it up since the cave water is a chilly 41 degrees. The surrounding area near the gift shop and pool is heavily wooded with limestone rock formations smooth and flat as though someone had carved shapes of prehistoric animals.

Fossil Trail

As soon as we had our RV backed into our spot while we were still hooking up power etc. a white haired fellow camper walking her ancient Chihuahua, Jack. She insisted that she immediately show me the fossils telling me that she had a pterodactyl fossil at her camp site. What she actually showed me was a bunch of rock formation that looked like various animals not “fossils” Sometimes we humor our senior campers with their stories. I hope someone listens to mine one day or at least reads thisJ so I followed her to her site. She pointed out a rock that looks a little like a pterodactyl if you have a big imagination in which I do. A man was sitting at a picnic table eating a giant bowl of beans. “Hello.” I said. He waived with his giant spoon in a gesture of greeting since his mouth was full. The woman said, “This is Terry.” “Nice to meet you” I said to the man. The woman who had not stopped talking since our first encounter embarked on how he and her met and bla, bla.” There was a problem with gnats flying up your nose that day and I was ready to boogie back to David who should have felt completely abandoned by now since this was not exactly the time to socialize. It seemed like I had been gone forever but it was only about 15 minutes. The flies and gnats were all buzzing in the man’s beans and he didn’t seem to care. I was grossed out and finally interrupted her. “I have to be getting back. It was nice to meet you Jack and Terry.” I nodded to the dog and the man respectively. The woman said, “Oh that is Tom, that is Terry” She pointed to the rock that sort of looked like a Pterodactyl. I immediately felt like I was in an episode of George Burns and Gracie Allen.  Gracie Allen had been reincarnated. I had been introduced to a rock and not the man. They left the next morning and nothing was left at that site except “Terry” until nightfall when a new camper arrived. I resisted the urge to introduce the new campers to Terry rather than become a paragraph in their blog.

Rock Formations on Fossil Trail

We met a nice Mennonite family and a Not-so-Retired Roper and a Retired Florist headed for Florida for the winter. We enjoyed the place so well we stayed for 2 nights even though we were just passing through.

The morning we left we took the recommended hike through the forest. It was stunning like a fairy tale. I half expected fair creatures to peep out from underneath the ferns. The limestone formations were blanketed with a layer of moss topped with short ferns growing straight out of the thick moss. Every so often we saw what we determined to be alternative entrances to the caverns.

Ferns Growing out of Moss Crusted Limestone

Rickwood Caverns State Park is a beautiful and almost magical place that you have to see if every passing through Alabama. The camp ground is lovely and the staff if friendly and helpful. We loved it.