Miles Cave

The group before going in

Randy  helping out on the rope

There is a bat in the top-center of photo

Saturday, the kids and I were in need of some adventure, we joined in with a group of fellow cavers from the MSS.(Minnesota Speleological Survey)  As part of the Kaving with Kandy monthly outing, we headed a little south of the twin cities to check out  Miles Cave. Although Kandy set up the trip, Tim really knows the cave, (has done a dig project inside), and acted as trip leader. With the close proximity to the city and the large amount of hikers in the area, and the fact that anyone can go the cave at anytime, I was surprised to see it in such good shape. There were some broken bottles and a small amount of trash inside, but small, natural features were still mostly intact. The cave has 800 feet of passage, a lot of which is a belly crawl. I believe the crawling part is what keeps most people out of the areas that are still in good shape. I'm not exactly skinny, I would say average, but I had to jam myself into three different spots and wiggle my way through. This is something I would not have done before I ever joined the MSS and got comfortable with things of this nature. It still freaks me out sometimes. The plan was to check out Miles Cave for a while and then move on to another cave in the area. It was damn cold that day and while I messed around inside the crawl, the kids went ahead with Tim to the exit and got really cold.  Everyone else was cold, including myself, and decided to "bag" the next cave and hit up the Perkins instead. Tim showed me how to get to the other cave, which I am planning on checking out soon.
I am thinking of doing a bike ride to the cave and sleeping inside for the night sometime this coming spring.  

This is what a lot of the cave looks like

Big "D" was really cold and took my jacket

The kids having fun exploring