Linville Caverns and Linville Falls
Well, I'm safe and sound in the mountains of North Carolina, daily surrounded by a troop of 16 kids between 12 and 14-years-old - those most awkward and uncomfortable of all ages. Learning the ins and outs of dealing with so many teenagers at once and trying my darndest to get them interested in and passionate about the natural world has been nothing short of an adventure. While we've had plenty of getting-to-know-and-understand-you adventures, we've also had some more intentional adventures in our beautiful landscape in the form of field trips. Our class is advertised with that powerful word "field trips" so the kids expect them, and I, being the nice teacher that I am (and being quite selfishly interested in seeing the Appalachians myself), indulge them.
Our first field trip was on Tuesday to Linville Caverns and Linville Falls. The sites are about 30 miles from campus (a good 45 minute to 1 hour drive on winding mountain roads), but I, of course, went and got us terribly lost, so it took a lot longer. We weren't really that lost, but we were many miles up the road from where we intended to be. Luckily, not all who wander are lost. In our accidental trip into the Pisgah National Forest, we stopped at an overlook to check out Brown Mountain, for centuries the home of mysterious 'night lights' that have yet to be explained by anyone, including the U.S. Geological Survey. The mountain and its crazy luminescent happenings are the inspiration for the book/movie Escape to Witch Mountain. Who knew?
After a U-turn, some directions, and a lot of backtracking, we finally made our way to Linville Caverns, only 45 minutes late... There's plenty of green on the outside of the cave, but not much inside. Everything is so very green here that stepping into the cave feels a lot like stepping out of the Appalachians, rather than into the heart of them. The clean, spring water that runs through and out of the cave is good for herbaceous life in both places, but the lack of sunshine on the inside makes it nearly impossible.
Green life is nearly impossible inside, but not entirely. Thanks to the warmth generated by the lights that allow tourists to view the caverns under circumstances other than total darkness, algae and mosses grow quite happily on some of the formations (according to the tour guide, caves are one of two places on earth where total darkness is possible, the other being somewhere deep, deep down in the bottom of the ocean).
We also stood for a while right underneath a fault line in the cave. Very cool, but not a good place to be in case of an earthquake, which, according to the guide, is scheduled for any day or century or millennium now.
After spending about an hour in the depths of the earth, we made our way just up the road to some of its heights. Linville Falls is located on the same gorge as the caverns and was created by many of the same waters, but the end product is, if you ask me, a little more visually appealing. Our first sight on the trail, however, was this creepy-crawly.
The sights are all b-e-a-u-tiful from here on out. Due to our unintentional detour to Brown Mountain, we were quite behind schedule, so we moved really quickly up and down the trail to see as much of the falls as we could in just a little bit of time. Luckily, a few glimpses is really all it takes to be impressed by the area.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the Appalachians, and I'm trying hard to thoroughly enjoy and learn from, rather than just tolerate, the kiddos that I'm sharing this experience with. So far, so good.
Our first field trip was on Tuesday to Linville Caverns and Linville Falls. The sites are about 30 miles from campus (a good 45 minute to 1 hour drive on winding mountain roads), but I, of course, went and got us terribly lost, so it took a lot longer. We weren't really that lost, but we were many miles up the road from where we intended to be. Luckily, not all who wander are lost. In our accidental trip into the Pisgah National Forest, we stopped at an overlook to check out Brown Mountain, for centuries the home of mysterious 'night lights' that have yet to be explained by anyone, including the U.S. Geological Survey. The mountain and its crazy luminescent happenings are the inspiration for the book/movie Escape to Witch Mountain. Who knew?
After a U-turn, some directions, and a lot of backtracking, we finally made our way to Linville Caverns, only 45 minutes late... There's plenty of green on the outside of the cave, but not much inside. Everything is so very green here that stepping into the cave feels a lot like stepping out of the Appalachians, rather than into the heart of them. The clean, spring water that runs through and out of the cave is good for herbaceous life in both places, but the lack of sunshine on the inside makes it nearly impossible.
Green life is nearly impossible inside, but not entirely. Thanks to the warmth generated by the lights that allow tourists to view the caverns under circumstances other than total darkness, algae and mosses grow quite happily on some of the formations (according to the tour guide, caves are one of two places on earth where total darkness is possible, the other being somewhere deep, deep down in the bottom of the ocean).
Caves are incredibly impressive, but honestly a little gross-looking, too. Everything looks a little too much like slime, even though it's actually rock solid.
We also stood for a while right underneath a fault line in the cave. Very cool, but not a good place to be in case of an earthquake, which, according to the guide, is scheduled for any day or century or millennium now.
After spending about an hour in the depths of the earth, we made our way just up the road to some of its heights. Linville Falls is located on the same gorge as the caverns and was created by many of the same waters, but the end product is, if you ask me, a little more visually appealing. Our first sight on the trail, however, was this creepy-crawly.
The sights are all b-e-a-u-tiful from here on out. Due to our unintentional detour to Brown Mountain, we were quite behind schedule, so we moved really quickly up and down the trail to see as much of the falls as we could in just a little bit of time. Luckily, a few glimpses is really all it takes to be impressed by the area.
I'm thoroughly enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the Appalachians, and I'm trying hard to thoroughly enjoy and learn from, rather than just tolerate, the kiddos that I'm sharing this experience with. So far, so good.
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