A few weekends back, we did a little caving and also returned to an abandoned mine that everyone had been itching to see.

Anne, Sertile, and myself all met up that afternoon at our usual place. Since I was the only person with a vehicle that had gas and would hold us all, everyone piled into my car, although they may have regretted it after they saw all the junk in my car (including a large piece of posterboard with "PENIS" written on it left over from a joke I played during our missile base exploration). We went and picked up one of Sertile's friends, then he directed us to a place near the edge of town where a jogging trail snaked through the woods. We parked there, and Sertile led us down the trail a ways and, after a little searching, located the cave he was looking for.

The entrance to the cave sloped down harshly, and we all slid down into it. Inside, we had a crampled crawl along several uneven muddy slopes. There were almost no places where you could stand or even raise upright, but it did have a few cool formations inside.

Toward the end, we reached a point where it became too small to continue on except for a large drop into about a foot of water. Sertile and I decided to go down into the water and see if it went anywhere. Once we were in it, we could see that it might go on a bit farther, but it would require swimming in a couple feet of water with only a foot or so of airspace above your head. I was hesitant about taking a cold bath, even though I was wet from the waist down already, but Sertile gave it a shot and laid down in the water before deciding not to go on.

Afterwards, the four of us headed out of the cave, covered in mud from head to toe. We got to enjoy some strange looks from the other joggers on the hiking trail as we were walking back. When we reached the car, we decided to leave the "PENIS" posterboard under the windshield of a neighboring vehicle to get it out of our way. I'm sure the people that owned the car are still scratching their heads over that one.

We all headed to Anne's house after that, although I don't really remember why. I think some of us wanted to put on dry clothes or something. Either way, we talked to Anne's parents for a while, and we decided, since the night was still young, to drive out to an abandoned underground quarry that we knew about.

I had been to this particular mine three times before. Kid Sparkle and I had first located it by accident several months earlier. Then, Raven, Sewer Shinobi and I had come back and briefly visited it again, although we had to leave because we were nearly caught. I came back a third time by myself to take some nice long exposure shots of the mine.

This time we parked nearby and snuck down into the area. I made a wrong turn as I was leading everyone to the area, and we ended up walking way out of our way and having to backtrack. Finally, we ended up at the mine and started wandering around inside. It was everyone else's first trip to this particular one, so we took a little time to wander around aimlessly. It was just your typical underground quarry. Huge rock columns supporting a two-story ceiling laid out in a grid pattern, with roads in between them big enough for dump trucks and heavy equipment to drive through. It was no different from all the others ones I'd seen, but each one always amazed me.

At some point down in the mine, I showed everyone some papers and maps that I knew were down there. Upon inspecting them, I realized something that I'd missed the first few times I'd been there: the mine had two levels! Apparently, I'd only ever been in the lower level of the mine. It was confusing, too, because there didn't seem to be room above us for another level. But, according to the maps, it was there and it was even bigger than the level we were on.

When we were just about getting tired of walking around, Anne and I decided to wander over to a section where we could hear running water. It was the only section of the level that I hadn't explored, because it had been pretty wet every time I'd been there. This time was no exception, but since Anne and I were already soaked from caving, we just started walking out into the water.

We stopped briefly in the middle of the water while I caught a crawdad that was somehow living inside the mine. I took a few pictures of him and tossed him back. We trodded on after that, but we stopped when the water reached about waist high because it was freezing cold. Plus, we could see that the water got much deeper just a little farther on, possibly even over our heads.

After that, we made the long walk back to our cars, vowing to come back with a raft to explore both the flooded section and the mysterious second level.