Cave women all belong to the same club.

Most of my traveling in the past had always been solo endeavors, New Zealand, summer trips in 2007 and 2006, Tex-Mex 2007, etc. I decided to check out and become more aware of events and activities hosted by local groups. I had previously heard of some local event groups and found the Tampa Adventure Group (TAG) through the meetup.com website. I learned on Thursday about a planned trip to the caves in the Withlacoochee State Forest, just north of Brooksville. When I got there after some parking-lot traffic on I-75 due to an accident, the group was already over by one of the cave system. I didn't know a single person there but just introduced myself to a few and started chatting. The caves, like most of the dry caves in Florida, were pretty small and not really extensive; in fact, there wasn't much that one could penetrate more than a few dozen feet in most places. In most of the areas, only 3-4 people at a time could go in and crawl around before things got too small to go any further unless you were a Smurf. While the group was in a cave, I went over to check out Dames Cave (aka vandal Cave)nearby that was a large pit with a small side access. One of the rooms in here reminded me of the powder rooms in different old forts where there was a small entrance to a larger room used for storage.

After everyone was done at one cave the group headed a little bit north to Peace cave (given the name due to the peace symbol painted on the nearby tree). This was the site of a cave rescue of two young boys in 1999; http://www.mejeme.com/dive/articles/withlacoochee_122799.htm The entrance after the rescue had been blocked, as is typical of administrative knee jerk reaction to some public event where the elected feels that the population needs to be protected from itself, however from what I understand it is never really locked. There is plenty of room inside the chambers for a fair amount of people to stand up and hang around while others explore some of the off-shoot crawl spaces.

For those interested in visiting the caves, they are fairly easy to reach. Use 10522 S Lecanto Hwy, Lecanto, FL 34461 as your Google Maps, Google Earth, or GPS address to get you close. After finding the trail head, it is just about a half-mile from the road to reach Dames. You'll see a fairly obvious clearing to your right that has some poles and cables up to prevent vehicles from getting too close. From here, Peace Cave is to your left and up the path northward about .3 - .4 miles or so away.

Pretty much all you need are some clothes you can get dirty (there isn't any water in the caves, so all you'll get will be a bit dusty) and a couple of headlamps or flashlights. Have at least one extra light for each person if you can (or at *minimum* 3 lights for every two people) as you explore a little bit. Peace cave has two decent sized rooms, but only one of the tunnels really allows one to travel very far before it pinches off into smurf sized offshots.

Here is some information concerning the geology of Dames cave: http://www.karst.usf.edu/Publications/SWFWMD2003/DamesCave.pdf Dames cave is located around ( 28.709289° -82.442893°) for those using a GPS or want to plug it into Google Earth.
Here is some good HD video someone shot during a different trip trip: http://wahoohiker.com/2009/04/09/vandal-cave-in-the-withlacoochee-state-forest/

Peace Cave

Peace Cave

Dames Cave

If you found any of the information to be useful, the feel free to add in a comment. I enjoy outdoor travel and sharing information, so if you have other recommended sites or stories, then include them as well. If you are in the Tampa area and enjoy a fairly wide range of outdoor and adventure activities, then check out the Tampa Adventure Group (TAG).
If you have time, check out some of my other outdoor or travel blog posts and let me know what you think. http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/search/label/travel http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/search/label/Italy http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/search/label/Aussie%20%2F%20Kiwi%20trip http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/search/label/photography

Holy bat guano, Batman! Our cave stinks!

While the rest of the family headed off to Rapid City, Kristern, her brother, and I headed off towards Wind Cave National Park to do a little bit of spelunking. It was both of their first real experiences inside of a cave, so I figured this little side trip would be a great initiation to test if Kristen would eventually like doing more stuff in the TAG area this winter. I took a decent picture of a fallout shelter sign in Lead that hinted in the state's cold war vunerability when it was spotted with nuclear missile silos and would have been amound the first targets in a new world war. We continued through to Wind Cave after making a few wildlife viewing stops. The tour itself was a lot of fun as it involved a good bit of crawling around, though nothing was really too tight to make it uncomortable for most of the group.

The cave had a fairly rich history and quite a few fairly unique formations. Unfortunately it is hard to deal with cave photography due to lack of light the camers can use to guage focus and exposure couple with a tendency to whitewash the subject. We only covered about a half mile in the 3 hours or so we were underground, though with almost everyone in the group having never been in a cave aside from the guide and myself, it wasn't too bad. After finishing the cave we headed back into Rapid City for dinner and then decided to catch the new movie 'Wall-E' which was entertaining. the Pixar short animation 'Presto' that showed prior to the feature's start was the best part of the entire evening. While the movie was alright, I felt they spent too much time on the fat people (which just seemed like an excuse to throw in a few know voice actors). We headed back to the hotel after another long, enjoyable day.