July 30th: You Won't Find Nobody....Else Like Me.

We had already decided that we were doing something epic today. What could be more epic than exploring the largest ice cave in the entire world?! 

After a healthy breakfast of vitamins and frosted flakes we hit the road towards somewhere cold in July. Eisreisensomething wasnt hard to find with all the highway signs with giant icicles on them. On the way, we stopped and took some pictures of the scenery. 

We parked and began our hike up a mountain.From the base where we parked, you couldn’t see any trace of a cave and definitely not any ice. But up we went. For a while actually. We finally made it to the ticket center where they had a little memorobilia shop as well. We then learned that we needed to buy tickets to a cable car and a guided tour of the cave. But first, we needed to go more UP. So we kept hiking.  On the way up we went through a creepy feeling tunnel. It was dimly lighted and had water dripping every few feet. Cool. 

 Creepy tunnel on the way to the cave.

Hangin in the cave. The cave makes you blurry.

Shortly after was the cable car. We waited in line forever. The whole time worrying we would miss the last tour. We were cutting it close, but we made it!

Me piggin out on a pretzel in line.

Our trusty ride up the really steep part of the mountain. We maintain that we could have hiked it if we had more time. That's ok, we hadn't ridden in a cable car yet.

When we finally got to the cave we were happy to find out that our tour would be in English! English is beginning to sound sweeter and sweeter these days. The cave was monstrous. It was so dark that every few people had to hold an oil candle to see inside. A huge gust of wind guards the entrance of the cave (difference in temperature creates wind I learned). Our guide George, reminded us sternly that there was no photography allowed in the caves. We obeyed all of the rules, of course. haha........

So Jennifer sneakily took pictures all the way through the caves. She was very sneaky. The dim lighting wasnt helpful, but still got some cool pics.

Road to the ice cave!

Told you it was big!!

Sneaky photos.

cont'd.

There were 700 steps in the caves that go 1 full km deep. The other 41 km are not explored on the tour! The ice formed massive structures that lit up different colors. At many points our guide George would stand on or in one of the structures and talk about it. The pictures of him make it look like we are looking at an alien! One of the structures looked like a giant elephant. Another like a wall with a secret tunnel. The cave as a whole left me kind of dumb-struck because I had no idea how it was made. Also, the size of it blew me away. I would have been amazed by the tour without the ice. But there was SO much ice! Deeper and deeper we went into the cave (that I was secretly pretending was the bat cave). Deep inside the cave the founder of the cave is buried. His dying wish was to have his ashes stored in his beloved cave. Weird. I think the cave is probably haunted. Which makes it even cooler.

George the ice cave alien.

We walked down to the car with shaky legs from the 700 steep steps up and the 700 steep steps down. Thats 1400 to the non math majors. When we got to the car we ended up stopping and talking for about an hour. We were the last ones to leave the mountain. 

Tired and hungry, we ate and went to bed.