I survived a Night on the Mountain

After our cave excursion, we drove back to the campsite where our friend informed us that he did indeed have to chase off goats from getting into our belongings.

There wasn't much resting time, because we needed to start grilling chicken for dinner, while the girls went to explore the cliff and the boys built a fort.

I took Keira to bed early, but I could still hear the fun chatter around the fire.

When everyone finally went to bed, the girls stayed up late in their tent playing Spades with plans to get up and watch the sunrise at the cliff.

I had my doubts that they would get up, but I heard them at 4am the next morning.

The reason being, I WAS SO COLD during the night that I hardly slept.

WOW!  IT WAS COLD!  I'll be better prepared next time.

Wait!  Did I just say, "Next time?"

After breakfast and fellowship time, I walked with the adults to look over the cliff and see more of God's creation

Beautiful!

The pictures don't do it justice.

 Wait.  Do you see a red shirt on the far left of the picture above?

Are those our children?

Are those my daughters through those leaves?

 






















Yikes!

The kids had hiked a different way, and the girls wanted to show us where they watched the sunrise that morning.






























Gulp!

Doug has better pictures because he used a real camera, but I'm too lazy to load them onto my laptop.

This is the best zoomed in shot I could get of them (before I yelled over at them to move away from the edge)!!

Back at camp, we decided to go explore another cave, and I was told I wouldn't have to climb as high.

Ok.  I'm in.

See?  There it is.  Right up those steps.

It was a LOT deeper than the other one.



And it got dark, fast.







In fact, we explored for 30 minutes into the mountain before we turned around.

If you've ever been to Natural Bridge Caverns or something like that, can you imagine it without smooth paths, electrical lighting, and handrails?

It was just us, the dank, dark deep, our lanterns, drippy celings, and two inches of mud caked on our shoes.

Pretty cool.

I turned around and looked back right as I knew we were about to lose all sense of the sun.

I can imagine that people who were forced to leave their homes at certain points in this country's history, found respite in this cave.

In the center of this photo above is a hole with light behind it.

All of the kids have disappeared into it.

There is another continuing tunnel on the other side.

As we waited for them, Doug and another man, looked over the edge at a deep chasm.  It has been reported that some explorers went spelunking down that chasm, and traveled down over two hours and never found the bottom.

 Here's Kylie covered in mud after she crawled back through the hole.





































 After all the kids came back through the hole, we all turned our lanterns off to experience the true darkness.  It reminded me of Genesis 1, except of course, we were standing on a firm, rock foundation.

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Here's my cave partner after the lights were turned back on.

 

We were so thankful that Doug had packed our head lamps from Uganda.

 It looks like Karis found another place to explore.  A hole leading UP.

 So after we got outside, they climbed on top of the hill to look down the hole.

Can you see the girls?

Well, after the cave, we ate a good lunch of hamburgers.  Two of the families took down tents, packed up, and headed home.  We left one family there to enjoy another night.

Now that I've done it, I would do it again.  I'd be more prepared, have warmer blankets for the night, and pray again for constipation.

In case you were wondering, He answered my prayers on this trip, and I never had to use the shovel.