Lost Sea Cave Campout

We all met at 6:00 in Sweetwater, TN. We were all excited to see the Lost Sea Caverns. Everyone went to do their own things while we waited. There was a store with magnets, knives and some other cool trinkets. There was gem mining place. I went and sat inside the information building in the air conditioning.

Around 6:30 we met up with our tour guides at the cave entrance. We were told the rules and shortly after we entered the cave. The staircase down was 132 steps that were steep, dark and wet with only a rope and posts to keep you from falling. Once we made it down the staircase, we were shown to our campsite.

After setting our stuff down, our guides led us down into the caves. On our way to the boats and the lake, we learned some history about the caves. It was used for gunpowder during the Civil War, moonshine, and a dance club during Prohibition. After hearing this we arrived at a large lake in the cave. We rode the boats around the lake and saw the Rainbow Trout in the lake.

Next, we started our easy crawls. There were several crawls that were easy for everyone to do first. Most of the people tried these. We spent some time trying to run up a slippery wall and grab a hole at the ceiling. Nobody could do this except the guide, but Ben came close. This was followed by the difficult crawls. The only one I did was the Bubble-Gum crawl. The walls were wet and looked like melting gun. We had to hold a rope to drop down about six feet into a hole and climb down this part of the cave. When we were finished, we were all very muddy.

After all the crawls and cave exploration, we went back to the campsite. We used wet wipes and wet towels to try and clean up. Then they turned out the lights so we could sleep. We got up early in the morning and had to climb back up those steep stairs to get out of the cave and drive home.

Webmaster Sam