Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park

This is the sign that greets you at the beginning of the hike to the entrance of the Lewis & Clark Caverns cave and let me tell you…it’s a doozy of a hike! You gain 300 vertical feet in less than a mile. Now, that might not sound like a big deal and to someone used to an altitude of close to 5,000 ft, it’s probably not a big deal at all, but we’re used to something a little closer to sea level. We huffed and we puffed our way up to the entrance and I think by half way there we all thought we were gonna die right there on the trail! It was a beautiful sunny Montana afternoon and I thought seriously about just laying down right there on the trail and telling the boys I’d meet them back at the visitor center…until I remembered we happened to be in rattlesnake country. So, I forged ahead and we finally dragged ourselves to the entrance of the cave. Believe it or not we weren’t even the last ones in our group to arrive so we got to appreciate the view and catch our breath once we got to the top.

And oh, what a view it was!

Once our entire group got there (we had to wait for a couple that decided to go at the last minute and who showed off by running up the entire path while the rest of us were still trying to recover) we started on our cave tour. It felt amazingly good in that dark cave! It was around 80ish degrees outside and a steady 50ish inside the cave! That river you see in the picture above is the Jefferson River. The cave entrance sits at about 1,400 ft above it. I don’t know why it’s called the Lewis & Clark cave, they didn’t even know it was there when they passed by this area back in 1805. Two guys from a nearby town found it. Tom Williams and Burt Pannel found it in 1882 and in 1911 it became Montana’s first state park.

 We walked in and walked down a couple hundred stairs and then we started to see some of the formations the cave is known for.

This stuff is called cave popcorn. I don’t know… I think I would’ve called it cauliflower or something. It doesn’t look much like popcorn to me. I’ll apologize now for the shoddy camera work. I’m by no means a professional and this cave was really dark and we weren’t allowed to use a flash, so I was working with the tiny bit of light that was available.

 Do you see the rock formations running down the side of the wall in the picture above? That stuff is called bacon. Yup, bacon. You’ve got to wonder why these people come up with the names they do. What about this looks like bacon?

We didn’t actually get to go into the room in the picture above, but I snuck a picture of it anyway. I love the formations in it! The tour guide said the name of this room is the Princess Room. There’s a separate tour you can take (at night) that allows you access to other parts of the cave and this room is part of that tour.

 When that sign at the beginning of the trail warned of having to bend and stoop to get through the cave it forgot to mention you also have to slide down a rock slide too. Look at all of those lovely layers in that rock! Now, we were smart here…we went last on the slide so everyone else cleaned and dried it off for us!

 And just like with all cave tours…the guides take great pleasure out of scaring the buh-jeez-us out of all of us by turning off the lights to show us just how dark it really is in the cave. All I could think of after this part is how glad I am we all have phones with flashlights on them now!

This room was called The Garden Of The Gods Room. Everything in this room was pink. The lights were still white. I looked. Not only was this room colorful it was also the room with the biggest formations in the cave. It was impressive.

 When it was all over and we were spit out of the mountain a half mile from the visitor center, we were all glad we huffed and puffed up that trail. The guided tour covers 2 miles, is 2 hours long and you travel 600 or so stairs in the cave. It was all worth it. The formations were amazing, the tour guide was entertaining, and the time spent learning something new with our boys was definitely an afternoon well spent!

If we ever get to go back for a second visit, we’ll try to go earlier in the day and do one of the several hikes that are available outside of the cave.

See y’all down the road!!