Cave-in-Rock.....

Cave-in-Rock is a fascinating place full of history! It was first noted in 1729 by M. de Lery of France and called caverne dans Le Roc. After the Revolutionary War it became a lair for outlaws, bandits, and river pirates along the Ohio River. One of the more notorious was Samuel Mason who was in Washington's army, but later used this cave to lure unsuspecting travelers and rob them. If you ever saw the movie "How The West Was Won", this cave was used in a scene depicting exactly that sort of activity. There is more history at this website. You start in a park on top of the cliffs over looking the Ohio. The view is beautiful.
Looking down through a crack at the beach below.

Some nice steep steps to take down to the cave trail.

After a short trail walk along the edge of the river with interesting cliffs to look at, you round the corner to the cave opening....

The cave is 55 feet wide and looks like a big hole in the cliff.

Looking back towards the back of the cave. This is not a series of tunnels, but just one very large cave worn in the limestone by the river.

Looking up at the ceiling.

In the center of the cave is an slit in the ceiling.....I'm looking up at it, but it was hard to photograph. There is a place outside to look down and we forgot to do that.

Standing in the cave looking out towards the river.

Standing in the entrance to the cave, if you look up there is graffiti dating back to 1913. The ceiling is about 20 feet over my head, so I was wondering how they did that! My sister-in-law looked this up and there was a large flood back then and the water level would have been high enough for someone to come in a boat and reach the ceiling. There was other graffiti at the same level and date.

Mike and Melissa studying the graffiti.

This cave is hollowed out of limestone. This is the wall in the opening.

Walking back out I was looking at the pock-marked wall of the rocks.

And of course there was the long way back to the top! Groan! This was a different set of steps and more shallow then the ones we came down. We saw a family with young boys who went up and down several times in the time we were there. If only we could figure out how to harness the energy of young kids.....the world would not have an energy crisis!

Hey....I even found a squirrel! A grey squirrel busy digging in the hillside and ignoring us.

Cave-in-Rock has a small car ferry that takes you from Illinois over to the Kentucky side of the river, so we decided it would be fun to go back that way.

I tried to see the cave from the ferry, but it is around the corner of those rocks on the right side of the photo. You can see where the trail bends.

The ferry coming into the dock to pick us up.

This is about how many cars were on it each trip we saw....4-5.

Had to include this shot as we near the shore.....I didn't realize I had taken my own photo in the mirror until I got home!
The drive home on the Kentucky side was very pretty with lots of farms with lots of horses, cows, sheep, goats. Would love to have had some photos, but we started our drive at 9AM and it was now 5PM and we were all tired. Maybe another day, we will go back the Kentucky route again. There is certainly a lot more to go see in the Shawnee National Forest! On the far side of the state there are some nice lakes I would like to visit.