Caves / Caverns – WANDERLUST FAMILY ADVENTURE

Lost River Gorge & Boulder Caves – 2021 (North Woodstock, New Hampshire)

September 26, 2022 Joseph Candora Caves / Caverns, Hiking, New England, New Hampshire, North America, Rivers, Uncategorized, United States, Waterfalls

I had visited The Lost River in North Woodstock several times in my early years (see here) so we decided to take Alex there since we have all been vaccinated. Make sure you have your walking shoes with you as there is a good deal of walking with stairs intermingled with wooden walkways as you wind your way up through the gorge to the caves. These are not true caves but talus caves the result of glaciation ~13,000 years ago and subsequent rock falls resulting in gaps between large boulders.

In 1852 two brothers Royal and Lyman Jackman stumbled upon the gorge while they were in the area fishing. One of the brothers slipped on a moss covered boulder and fell into a cave in waist deep water. It was the first of a great many cave that they found. In 1912 the area was being threatened by heavy logging so the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests a non-profit organization purchased the land to protect its natural beauty. The society still owns the land today.

From the visitor center make your way to the walkway through the gorge up to the boulder caves.

The walk up to the boulder cave is well worth the effort.

Paradise Falls alone is well worth the trek.

Once you get to the caves the fun starts, who doesn’t like scrambling around and under big rocks. For some of the tighter squeezes there are bypasses around the caves so you can opt to walk around.

Some of the caves have historical or informational signage.

Mammoth Cave National Park – Kentucky

August 31, 2020 Joseph Candora Caves / Caverns, Hiking, Historic Sites, Kentucky, National Parks Service, North America, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, United States, Waterfalls

Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest cave system known in the world. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under Flint Ridge to the north, the official name of the system has been the Mammoth–Flint Ridge Cave System. The park was established as a national park on July 1, 1941, a World Heritage Site on October 27, 1981, and an international Biosphere Reserve on September 26, 1990. The park’s 52,830 acres are located primarily in Edmonson County, with small areas extending eastward into Hart and Barren counties. The Green River runs through the park, with a tributary called the Nolin River feeding into the Green just inside the park. Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest known cave system with more than 400 miles of surveyed passageways,which is nearly twice as long as the second-longest cave system, Mexico’s Sac Actun underwater cave.

New photo by Wanderlust Family Adventure / Google Photos

Mesa Verde National Park – Colorado

August 30, 2020 Joseph Candora Architecture, Caves / Caverns, Colorado, Hiking, Historic Sites, National Parks Service, North America, Statue / Sculpture, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, United States

Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States. Established by Congress and President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, the park occupies 52,485 acres near the Four Corners region of the American Southwest. With more than 5,000 sites, including 600 cliff dwellings,it is the largest archaeological preserve in the United States. Mesa Verde (Spanish for “green table”) is best known for structures such as Cliff Palace, thought to be the largest cliff dwelling in North America. Starting c. 7500 BCE Mesa Verde was seasonally inhabited by a group of nomadic Paleo-Indians known as the Foothills Mountain Complex. The variety of projectile points found in the region indicates they were influenced by surrounding areas, including the Great Basin, the San Juan Basin, and the Rio Grande Valley. Later, Archaic people established semi-permanent rock shelters in and around the mesa. By 1000 BC, the Basketmaker culture emerged from the local Archaic population, and by 750 AD the Ancestral Puebloans had developed from the Basketmaker culture. The Mesa Verdeans survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash. They built the mesa’s first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known. By 1285, following a period of social and environmental instability driven by a series of severe and prolonged droughts, they abandoned the area and moved south to locations in Arizona and New Mexico.

Navajo National Monument – Shonto, Arizona

August 30, 2020 Joseph Candora Architecture, Arizona, Caves / Caverns, Hiking, Historic Sites, Mountain, National Parks Service, North America, United States

Navajo National Monument is a National Monument located within the northwest portion of the Navajo Nation territory in northern Arizona, which was established to preserve three well-preserved cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan People. The monument is high on the Shonto plateau, overlooking the Tsegi Canyon system, west of Kayenta, Arizona. It features a visitor center with a museum, two short self-guided mesa top trails, two small campgrounds, and a picnic area. Rangers guide visitors on free tours of the Keet Seel and Betatakin cliff dwellings. The Inscription House site, further west, has been closed to public access for many years.

Allen Hollis Covered Bridge – Kinsman Notch, New Hampshire

August 27, 2020 Joseph Candora Architecture, Bridges, Caves / Caverns, Covered Bridges, New England, New Hampshire, North America, Rivers, United States

The Lost River Gorge and Boulder Caves is a series of glacial caves, waterfalls and cascades in Kinsman Notch, New Hampshire. A recent addition to the walkways winding its way through the gorge is a pedestrian covered bridge The Allen Hollis Bridge.