Boyden Cavern and the haunted toilets
Jun 20 '00
I placed this review here because the section it is normally supposed to be under does not seem to be working. It won’t let me submit reviews. I will move it to it’s appropriate category when it’s fixed.
Sunday I took my husband and daugther to Boyden Cavern. Cara and I had been there before; this was my husbands first time.
Boyden Cavern is located in the deepest Canyon in the United States, the 8,000 foot deep Kings River Canyon of the Sequoia National Forest. It lies beneath the 2,000 foot high marble walls of the famous Kings Gate. Boyden Cavern is located between Grants Grove and Cedar Grove—about 10 miles before Cedar Grove where Highway 180 crosses the Kings River.
You buy your tickets at a small building that also sells souvenirs and snacks and off you go. Tickets are $8.00 for an adult, $4.00 for children. Tours leave every hour, on the hour--It is not wheelchair accessible. While you are waiting, you can sit at the shaded picnic tables outside of the snack bar/souvenir shop/ticket office and marvel at the Kings River flowing directly past.
The tour begins with a steep five minute walk to the entrance. At the entrance of the cave there will be some benches to rest on, and I can assure you’ll need to sit down after the short climb. Your tour guide will meet you at the entrance. The great thing about this cavern is that it’s a constant 55 degrees—great for those of us that are trying to beat this San Joaquin Valley heat. Unfortunately, the natural air-conditioning, and the tour, are 45 minutes long.
Groups will follow a dimly lighted and hand rail equipped trail as the guide points out the various formations. You will learn about Stalactites, Stalagmites, Soda Straws, columns and crystalline helicites. Some of the speleothems have formed over the thousands of years, to resemble familiar objects such as a wedding cake, a taco shell, a huge stack of pancakes, a Christmas tree, etc. You will also see a small subterranean stream and get an occasional drip of water on the head from one of the Stalactites above.
About halfway through the tour, your group will come to an area in the cavern where the stream seemingly seems to dry up. It is big enough to seat everyone on several rocks. Here your tour guide will give you a history of the mountain, the discovery of the cave and even a demonstration of what total pitch darkness is when he/she turns out the lights for several minutes (small children tend not to like this part..). If you sit quietly, you can hear the dripping of water off of the stalactites above and the trickle of the underground stream. It literally seems to echo.
Five years ago when I was there, a bat had made his home above the cave entrance. He is long gone now, but other bats still make Boyden Cavern their home though there aren’t that many as they don’t care for all of the traffic. Chances are you won’t see any.
Boyden Cavern is a small part of a five mile long cavern system but the tour only goes back a few hundred feet. There is an enormous boulder that blocks the cave passage so people must loop around a small boulder and leave the way they came in—out into the heat L.
My daughter and I really had to use the restroom after our tour so we headed out to the parking lot area where are a couple of sets of those camp ground type toilets. You know the type—they look sort of like porta-potties only they are stationary. They have the pit dug, the non-flushing toilet over the pit and the walls of the bathroom are made of real wood instead of that weird looking plastic material. In fact, you’d swear at first glance they were real bathrooms. They are remarkably clean and do not smell on the inside; in fact, they smell on the outside! They have what looks like chimneys sprouting out of the tops of the restrooms. This is how they filter the smell out. I didn’t quite understand how this was possible until my daughter and I went inside.
The restrooms are quite large so we went into on together. My daughter grabs one of those toilet seat covers, rips out the center and spreads it out on the seat. The very second she lets go of it, it disappeared. I am watching this and wondering how she can drop the toilet seat cover into the toilet. She grabs another one, rips out the center and spreads it out on the seat. When she lets go, it disappears again. Bewildered, she looks at me. This time, I grab a toilet seat cover and get it ready and put it on the seat. As I let go, the cover is sucked out of my hands and down into the septic abyss below. Ok, there’s some sort of air suction thingy going on here. This time I instruct my daughter,
"Pull your pants down and get ready to sit when I tell you."
She pulls her pants down, butt pointed at the toilet awaiting my signal. I grab a toilet seat cover, rip out the center and place it on the seat. I’m still holding it as I urgently tell her,
"Ok, go!!"
Simultaneously, I let go of the seat cover and she backs her butt up as quickly as nine year old legs go when when forced to run/walk backwards with pants around ankles.
To late. The seat cover was sucked below and her butt landed in my hands. We laughed so hard that I forced her to sit down and do her business. It was that or risk having her pee on the floor. As she is doing her thing, she stops giggling and her eyes open wide in shock. I ask her what’s wrong.
"The air, It’s like trying to pull me down inside the toilet!"
When she is finished, I take my turn. Sure enough, the air is being suctioned out (I can feel it sort of tugging on my backside), and through those chimneys outside—ruining that wonderful mountain and pine tree smell.
Ok, aside from the toilets at Boyden Cavern it’s worth the trip. The cave formations are awesome and beautiful—and it just blows my mind that it all developed over thousands and thousands of years.
Boyden Cavern: It’s nature at it’s finest and toilets at it’s strangest.
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Epinions.com ID:
MHawkins
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Member: 'Midge'
Reviews written: 86
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About Me:
Poneyboy is NOT MY husband, boyfriend, or brother! We are NOT related!
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