Mullins Spring Cave!

This morning I got up at 6:30 to go explore a brand new cave!  I was bringing along Jacob Patton, Daniel, and my new caving friend Hannah.  We were going to Mullins Spring Cave.  This cave has two entrances.  A "dry" one, and a "wet" one.  The dry entrance simply means you don't get wet until 10 feet inside.  The wet entrance means you are wet before you enter.  The two entrances are less than 500 feet apart.

                                         (The "wet" entrance)

                                         (The "dry" entrance)

We went in the dry entrance and saw a huge pool that showed no sign of ending.  After looking around we decided we were going to have to wade through it.  That's even what the cave description said when it was mapped.  So we plunged in.  Jacob waited a little while until we found a route to a big rock in the middle of the pool.  And that's where things got sketchy.

                                      (Daniel waiting for me to lead the way)
See, we could see the pool stretching on. It was kind of a maze, going around corners and stuff.  Because of the minerals dissolved in the water, it was cloudy.  And you can't see the bottom of the pool.  I didn't see a clear way to get through.  I tried lowering myself off the big rock, but I couldn't feel the bottom.  So, finally, with all four of us hunkering around this rock Daniel finally just jumped off the rock, found the bottom, and led the way.

We waded along, the deepest it came up to on my was a little past my belly button.  We finally got out of the water and walked along some of the lower level sections in the cave.  We also found another pool, and next to it was a deep hole.  And of course, Daniel, being curious, had to lower himself into it to see how deep it was.

There were some scattered formations we looked at.  We really didn't know where we were going that much.  Just doing some exploring, and marking the passages with glow sticks.  After going through a rocky crawl, we found a way to climb up to the upper level passages.

                                            (Jacob, able to now get on his hands as knees as he comes out of the crawl)
When we reached the upper level of the section we were on, we could hear a roar of water.  So, we checked it out.  I found a small hole to crawl through and found myself on level with a waterfall.  The waterfall came out of a hole in the wall and tumbled down about a 35 foot shaft to the lower levels.

We all came through the small passage and admired the waterfall for a while, before we began the trek back.

                                              (Hannah, just came through the hole)
We made pretty good time coming back, and soon we got back to the huge, expansive, deep, pool.

                                    (Before it got too deep.)

It was an interesting trip back through the pool, but it didn't take us too long this time.  We made our way out, got a group picture, and then split up to change.  It was an awesome way to end spring break!  Over all, apart from my amazing backpacking trip to Tennessee, I managed to crawl around in 4 caves this week!  Two of them I'd never been in before!  I'd call my spring break a success!!!

                                           (Morning sun, it's hard to get good pictures)