Indiana

The Indiana Cave Trail

September 9, 2014 By Sandra Friend Leave a Comment

Roadtripping through the Midwest, we kept stumbling across show caves in places where cornstalks otherwise covered the rolling landscape. First in Wisconsin, then Iowa. Arriving in Southern Indiana for a meeting at West Baden Springs, we spotted the signs for Bluespring Caverns en route. It was then and there we decided that walking through Indiana’s caverns would be next on our to-do list.

We’d planned to stop at state parks with caves, but a visit to Spring Mill State Park brought the white-nose syndrome problem to light. As we toured the extensive mill complex, an industrial village founded in the early 1800s, we asked our guide about the caves. The creek that fed the sluice to run the mill seemed to be coming right out of the hillside, from a cave.

Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell, Indiana — Spring Mill in Mitchell is driven by water flowing out of a cave

“None of the Indiana state parks allow you to go in the caves anymore,” said our guide, to our disappointment. We’d learned about this disease at our other stops outside Indiana. It’s a fungus that causes bats to wake too early from hibernation, and they starve to death. At each of those caves, we were made to walk through a sanitizing solution to soak any possible carriers off our feet before we set foot in the caves. Sadly, we crossed our state park stops off the list, knowing there would be no cave exploration possible.

Bluespring Caverns, Mitchell

At an angle I couldn’t have dreamed possible, the path from the gift shop at Bluespring Caverns pitched headlong into a sinkhole. If I hadn’t clung to the rail on the way down, I might have done so as well. “That’s crazy steep!” I said, and my tour companions agreed.

Bluespring Caverns Indiana — Steep path down into Bluespring Caverns

We were relieved to alight on a terrace inside the cave mouth, looking down at the dark river below. This would be an exploration by boat on a waterway through the caverns. Formations were minimal, as the passageway had been carved by flowing water rather than dripping water.

Still, our guide kept us entertained, pointing out cave crickets moving across the masses of mud against the rock walls, and startling us with a sudden moment of darkness in one of the larger chambers as he demonstrated the echo effect of this rocky tunnel.

Marengo Cave, Marengo

“My grandmother square danced inside this cave,” said Shelby Wetzl, which let us know that she grew up knowing all about Marengo. Since the attraction offers two different cave tours, we decided to do both, and had her as our guide. Our group of seven adventurers swelled to 21 by the time Shelby led us down a trail through the woods to a tunnel bored for access into the cave. Beneath a very steamed-up piece of glass were calcite flowers. I saw smaller ones all across the roof of the cave, which has several levels to it. The path was gently sloped.

Square Dance Hall Marengo Cave Indiana — Shelby shares her grandma’s fun in the caverns

We turned right, entering the Graveyard, with its white stalagmite pillars. The tour route, carved deeply into the floor, wound us through forests of stalacitites and stalagmites at face level, working its way downhill past a pile of breakdown. A spotlight shone on a cluster of calcite crystals in a pocket across from glittering flowstone with several tin drinking cups set on the floor. When Shelby said that the water was used to quench visitor’s thirst on tours long ago, I couldn’t help but think of Pluto Water, a natural laxative! And indeed, this water, with its heavy mineral content, did the same.

Water cups trapped in flowstone at Marengo Cave

We walked through broad passageways carved by underground streams. What they lacked in formations they made up for in historic grafitti, with one section lit by old fashioned lanterns. Past the dance hall, where the square dances were once held, was Penny Passage, where people once tossed coins at the ceiling and they stuck there. They twinkled overhead as we walked beneath them. Beyond a rock pulpit once used by a preacher, we entered a room with gorgeous helictites high up on the wall. Shelby played her flashlight across them to show a girl swinging. Curving around Mirror Lake to end the first tour, we ascended, unsurprisingly, into the gift shop. The Crystal Palace tour would be next.

In 1883, brother and sister Orris and Blanche Hiestand discovered the entrance to Marengo Cave through a sinkhole on a neighbor’s property. They kept their secret for a few days before finally telling the farmer at church. Samuel Stewart didn’t even know he had a sinkhole on his land, let alone a cave. The tour led us down into “what they found,” including a shimmering waterfall dropping through a hole in the cave ceiling, and flowstone domes coated with sparkling calcite crystals. We walked through a nook of formations and access to a cave passage from which a steady breeze blew in towards us. The Crystal Palace was the star of this tour, a big chamber with lots of formations.

Crystal Palace Marengo Cave — Photo stop in the Crystal Palace

After we left the caverns, we popped into the nearest restaurant, Van’s Country Table, for lunch. When we mentioned the tour to our waitress, she brought out a surprise for us. We did a double-take. Shelby’s twin worked in the kitchen! We chatted about their jobs for a few minutes before she went back to work.

Squire Boone Caverns, Corydon

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Squire Boone Caverns, taking in the village of shops that surrounded the parking area. The cave’s discovery was by Daniel Boone’s brother in the late 1700s. They’d both explored some of it. Squire built a gristmill which ran on water coming out of the cave, similar to the one we saw at Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell.

Shops at Squire Boone Caverns — Village of shops around the Squire Boone Caverns entrance

It was disappointing to arrive just after a tour had taken off, and the next one wouldn’t be for an hour. I hemmed and hawed before finally saying, “let’s wait.” We scrambled up to Squire’s grave in a cave along a footpath glittery and sparkly with cast-off minerals, especially quartz, from the gem panning sluice. All of the little cabins in the village were closed, so there wasn’t much to do but sit and wait until our guide, Josh, mustered the tour group.

Squire Boone's resting place — Squire Boone’s final resting place

I was surprised to learn that the cave didn’t open for tours until 1972. Its surreal entry is via a 62 foot spiral staircase, as if you were descending from the top of a lighthouse into the earth. Once you’re inside the cave, it has catwalks and stairs, since rushing water is everywhere, especially below. The formations aren’t as grand as the ones at Marengo Cave, but there are showy narrow passageways with rimstone shelves, one with rare cave mushrooms (a rock formation) on them.

Shattered soda straws lay beneath the ledges like coral on a Caribbean beach. Just footfalls from the main path, crevices gaped several stories deep. A steep staircase led us up above a waterfall that dropped several stories. One chamber holds the re-interred remains of Squire Boone, with a modern headstone. Since we’d visited his gravesite aboveground, I wasn’t clear on why this was here, unless it somehow connected with the pit cave above.

The deeper we walked into the cavern, the more fascinating it became. A waterfall flowed beneath the iron grate catwalk, and moments later, we came face-to-face with rimstone pools overflowing in continual cascades, a sight you’d expect to see in Cappodocia or Yellowstone, but not underground. Then, disappointment. We were barred from entering what looked to be an even more beautiful passage up ahead. The tour used to go there, but was closed now because part of the cave collapsed. “How recently?” I asked. Josh didn’t know. “They can’t afford to rebuild it,” he said, as we turned around to follow the catwalks back to the entrance.

Indiana Cave Trail t-shirt — If you do the Indiana Cave Trail, you get the t-shirt

When we planned to stop at all of Indiana’s show caves, we didn’t know there was an award for that. For visiting all three Indiana show caves, we got free t-shirts to commemorate our Indiana experience, which the folks at Squire Boone Caverns handed us before we left.

See more of our photos from these three Indiana show caves

MORE TO EXPLORE
Last summer, America’s newest cave tour opened. Since 2010, cave explorers were looking for a connection to the 11th longest cave in the United States, the Binkley Cave System, which is more than 36 miles long. The 80-minute tours of Indiana Caverns include both a walking route and a boat trip.

For 2014, the Indiana Department of Environmental Resources has reopened select caves at Spring Mill State Park and Cave River Valley Natural Areafor public exploration. This is a pilot program, with the Indiana Karst Conservancy acting as stewards to teach visitors how to decontaminate before entering a wild cave so as not to spread white-nose syndrome. At McCormick’s Creek State Park , Wolf Cave also reopened, since bats do not roost there.

Visit Indiana’s Show Caves
The Indiana Cave Trail now includes four show caves: the three we visited and the new Indiana Caverns in Corydon. Details on this program can be found at the Indiana Cave Trail website.

Bluespring Caverns
Marengo Cave
Squire Boone Caverns
Indiana Caverns

Taking the Waters at French Lick

August 17, 2014 By Sandra Friend Leave a Comment

While getting ready for a much-needed massage at the Spa at French Lick Springs Hotel, I asked my therapist, Lisa, about the namesake springs. “You mean Pluto Spring?” she said. She pointed down the hall. “The bath is there, if you’d like to try it.”

Named for the mineral salts once mined in this valley southwest of Indianpolis, Indiana, French Lick became of the focus of spa travel in the United States in the late 1800s, thanks to its two spacious resorts with mineral springs. Less than a mile apart in the same spring-blessed valley, the French Lick Springs Hotel and West Baden Springs Hotel competed for customers by offering a setting rivaling the elegance of European spa destinations.

Modeled on Baden-Baden in Germany, West Baden Springs, opened in 1855, adopted a Germanic-looking imp, Sprudel, as the mascot for its spring water. Rival French Lick Springs used the devilish Roman god of the underworld as its pitchman.

French Lick fountains — You can’t escape the sound of flowing water while in French Lick

The Power of Pluto

One of three springs once available to guests at the French Lick Springs Hotel, Pluto Spring is best identified with Pluto Water. Part “cure-all,” part advertisement for the health resort that welcomed its first guests in 1845, Pluto Water was exported around the United States from a bottling plant at French Lick.

By 1905, French Lick Springs Hotel became a sprawling complex, with a parade of famous guests over the decades, from Ava Lowle Willing, who divorced John Jacob Astor IV in 1909, to Howard Hughes and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Trains ran daily between Chicago and French Lick, making it a socialite destination and a favorite getaway for political party powwows.

On the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel is distinctly American, an imposing building of buff yellow “French Lick brick.” Inside its doors, the marbled columns and walls are an illusion, using a faux textured marbling technique called scagliola that imparts an elegance you’d swear was marble. The Italian mosaic floors are real. From this grand lobby, guests move on to the hotel’s dining areas, the casino, their guest rooms, or the spa.

Lisa, a native of St. Augustine, Florida – a place where we’d both sampled the Fountain of Youth, an artesian well said to have curative powers – filled me in on how Pluto Springs worked. “People would come to French Lick, dip a dipper into Pluto Spring for a drink, then walk through the gardens slowly, carrying a cane,” she said. “There were strategically placed outhouses that people whould have to rush to. You’d place the cane on the outhouse door when you were using it, so other people wouldn’t rush there in vain. When Pluto said go, you went!”

Pluto Water — Pluto water: we found a bottle in the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis

The Pluto Bath remains one of the spa’s regular treatments. “Today, a rare few individuals take a sip from the water of the bath, and we have a bathroom strategically placed nearby for that purpose,” said Lisa. Bottled until 1971, when the FDA made lithium a controlled substance (the water is high in natural lithium) and banned the sale of Pluto Water, the bottled water can still be found, unopened, in some of the region’s antique stores.

Serenity with Sprudel

When the original West Baden Springs Hotel burned to the ground in 1901, a new hotel rose in less than a year. Opening in 1902, it was a fanciful idea that “couldn’t be done” until a bridge engineer figured out how. The “Eighth Wonder of the World,” as the press called it, featured a massive domed atrium – 600 feet around, 100 feet tall – as its center. Guest rooms encircle it. Filled with delicate details, the hotel is a monument to historic preservation.

West Baden Hotel at French Lick — The elegant interior of the West Baden Hotel, where we stayed

On a history tour, we orbit the hotel’s interior. Compass directions appear in the carpet design – “you’ll always know where you are if you watch the floor,” said our guide – and peacock-colored light fixtures shimmer at the top of the dome. An elegant billiards room and a speakeasy-style bar have the feel of sets in a history museum. Sprudel peeks out from a pastoral scene above the atrium’s fireplace.

Sprudel at West Baden — Look for Sprudel in the upper right of the fireplace design

Four mineral springs tempted visitors to the hotel, where they would take mineral baths and drink of the “healing waters.” Sprudel was the last of the springs to be found, as it bubbled up in the middle of French Lick Creek. Within five years of the hotel opening, the water was bottled and shipped around the United States. But the 1929 stock market crash brought the era of opulence to a screeching halt.

In 1934, the hotel was sold to the Jesuits for a dollar, and they turned it into a private college. Abandoned for more than a decade, the building was literally falling apart when Indiana Landmarks purchased it in 1996, funded by an anonymous donor. More than $32 million in repairs were contributed. But not until casino gaming was approved could the nonprofit find a buyer for the restored landmark.

Although the Jesuits had capped three of the four springs on the property, they couldn’t cap Sprudel Springs. Reopening in 2007 – for the first time since 1932 – the West Baden Springs Hotel harkens back to its roots with The Spa at West Baden, named the “Best Luxury Hotel Spa” twice in recent years. The two-level layout includes a Natorium, an indoor swimming pool beneath the building. The skin-softening West Baden Signature Sprudel Bath remains one of the most popular, and least costly, of the spa treatments.

Natorium at West Baden Hotel — Swimming in the Natorium

Noting the inscription on the archway proclaiming “West Baden Springs — The Carlsbad of America,” I had to ask our guide. “Why Carlsbad?” I asked, thinking of the famous cave. “It was a grand European spa of the time,” he said, “the ‘in’ place in Bohemia.” Under a new name, it remains so today. A century ago, Americans “took the waters” too, but most of the famed mineral spring destinations have faded into memory. At French Lick, it still feels like the Gilded Age.

Visiting French Lick

Both French Lick Springs Hotel and West Baden Springs Hotel are owned and managed by French Lick Resort. The hotels are a mile apart, close enough to walk between on dedicated pathways through the gardens, or you can use a free shuttle between them. The compact historic community has many arts and antique shops. Golfers enjoy easy access to the Pete Dye Course at French Lick and Valley Links.

Summer is the busy season, but both resorts are open year-round. Book spa appointments, especially soaks in the spring-fed baths, well in advance.

Visiting the Eiteljorg Museum

June 20, 2013 By John Keatley Leave a Comment

Dramatic entrance to the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art

When we arrived at the JW Marriott in Indianapolis for Sandy’s SATW conference, what a pleasant surprise to discover the Eiteljorg Museum next door! I’d read about it in Cowboys & Indians magazine and now I could see it for myself. I was there for my first visit the next morning.

I’m from Florida and have only visited the West. But I’ve always been fascinated by its mystique. Using wagon trains, push carts, on horseback, and on foot, hardy American pioneers went West.

The Eiteljorg Museum tells the other story, that of the Native Americans who for generations called the open plains their home. On the upper level I found an excellent display of tools, crafts and items used in their every day life, including a wigwam and a tipi. Having owned and camped in a tipi, being able to go inside a wigwam was an eye-opening experience. Long sheets of bark attached like modern shingles gave it less of a nomadic feel. The bark was attached to a tipi like frame, with additional poles along the outside for strength.

Displays of native crafts both vintage and modern were mixed among stories and histories, as well as artifacts such as the pen used by President Clinton when he signed a bill returning tribal lands to their ancestral owners.

On the main level three galleries are devoted to Western art, making this one of only a handful of museums in the country showcasing this genre. The rooms are filled with dozens and dozens of paintings from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Thankfully, these artists wandered into the wilderness and recorded the landscape, the people and the beauty of this untamed land. The gallery is also home to the works of modern masters. Painting, stone sculptures, and bronzes, there was something available for everyone’s artistic palate. One huge painting was so realistic that I walked across the room unsure if I were seeing a painting, or a photograph. What a painting!! Had my checkbook been better prepared and if we had the wall space, it would have come home with us.

The lower level transported the kids, and some of us adults, to the old West. Welcome to the stagecoach from Cheyenne to Deadwood! There were several rooms of hands-on learning, including an opportunity to design and build your own totem pole. Once it was completed there was a rope pull to raise it. Don’t try this at home, kids!

Before visiting the Eiteljorg, I had never really thought of Indiana as being out “West.” This visit taught me that there were three indigenous tribes living where the city of INDIANapolis now sits. Isn’t that the sign of a good museum, to walk out and find yourself saying “Wow, I didn’t know that…?”

Being a kid again at the Indiana State Museum

October 23, 2012 By Sandra Friend 2 Comments

John figures out a harvester at the Indiana State Museum

What fun we had during an afternoon’s ramble in the Indiana State Museum! It was almost like being a kid again. Okay, when no one else was looking, it WAS like being a kid again. I was downright gleeful showing John rocks, minerals and fossils in the dimly lit “Birth of the Earth” hall – collecting rocks was one of my big hobbies as a kid and an adult – and John, a former teepee owner, could fill in the blanks for me on the domiciles of ancient peoples in the “Native Americans” section. We were sorry we had to move through it all so fast between our conference sessions, but a few of the high points included:

Discovering the clever limestone mining display above the fossil hall
Watching the Foucault pendulum strike down blocks
Checking out an array of antiques from Indiana’s past
Discovering our childhoods up on the walls in the Pop Culture exhibit

We spent the most time playing in a temporary exhibit on the Science, History, and Culture of Corn. In a state full of cornfields, in a state where we’d eaten more corn in a week than we usually do in a month, learning the history of corn and how corn is used – not just for food – was fun, especially when it came to the interactive exhibits. In this video, John creates an explosion with corn.

A few minutes later, he discovered what it’s like for his farming cousins in the Midwest to drive a harvester.

Gotta love that Foucault Pendulum!

Thanks, Indy, for an afternoon of being a kid in one of the many museums at White River State Park.

Take a look around the museum in our photo album.

Collecting Boy Scout Council Shoulder Patches

October 1, 2012 By John Keatley 1 Comment

Each Boy Scouts of America (BSA) Council has a unique shoulder patch. Seeing one of these patches on a person’s uniform sleeve tells you where they are from. These CSPs have been an official part of the uniform since the early 1970s. Through the years, only a few council emblems have remained unchanged.

My home council has been Central Florida Council since I became a Cub Scout almost fifty years ago. Our first CSP featured a launching Saturn Five rocket and orange trees. Many years later, with the Space Shuttle program replacing the Saturn missions, the patch was changed to keep up with the times. I’m sure now, with the Shuttle being retired, that a new CSP design will take its place.

Through the years, many councils’ CSPs have under gone similar revisions. Many Councils now issue special event or fund raising CSPs to help fund their program. From recruiting to Christmas tree sales, there’s been a unique issue for almost everything you could think of.

I first started collecting CSPs while attending Philmont Scout Ranch in 1973. The ones I gathered are still in my collection after all these years. Everywhere I traveled with Scouting I carried a box of CSPs. I traded with the dream of one day having one CSP from every council.
In those early years of CSPs, there were few requirements from the National BSA office about these emblems. Then, in the mid 1970s, the National Office required that all CSPs be identified with a BSA trademark: a fleur-di-lis, the words “Scouting/USA” or just “BSA.” Some councils’ CSPs already had one or more of the required trademarks. Many did not. This requirement led to many councils’ second issue of their CSP. Often the required trademark was just incorporated into the existing design. For the rest, it led to a total redesign.

Before the new requirement by the National office, I was well on my way toward my collection of one from each council. At every Scouting event attended by people from out of my council, I was there trading.

When the chance to pick up the newer issue came up, I took it. Now my “one from each council” mission had changed. I now had the first and second issue CSPs from many of the councils. After trading at three Jamborees, three National Order of the Arrow Conferences, and dozens and dozens of state and regional gatherings, my collection grew and grew.

As my working hours took more and more of my free time, the collection was set aside. It was never really forgotten, as I would pick up a few new CSPs here and there. With my reintroduction into Scouting as an Assistant Scoutmaster and future Venture Crew Associate Advisor, I started thinking about collecting Council Shoulder Patches (CSP) again.

While traveling with Sandy to the SATW conference, we drove through Madison, Wisconsin. Looking online I realized that we were passing through a newly formed council, Glaciers Edge. It was formed when Four Rivers and Sinissippi councils were merged together. I already had the two no longer existing council patches in the collection.

Pulling up directions on the smart phone, we found the Glaciers Edge Council office. A purchase from their Scout Shop, and I had a new CSP for my old collection.

While visiting relatives in Iowa, a quick look showed us that a different council office was less than two miles away. A second new CSP for the collection! For this council I already had an old issue in the collection. It’s been replaced by a much newer and more colorful issue.

At the Boy Scout council office in Indianapolis

By the time we returned from our trip, we had visited nine states, visited six Boy Scout Council offices, and driven over 3,600 miles.

As we continue our travels and journeys, I’m sure there will be a lot more council offices in our future. I already have CSPs from just under 500 councils. But I’m still missing CSPs from 33 active councils, and 11 from councils that no longer exist.

Reviving an old collection from my youth is a lot of fun. Sharing it with someone just makes it better! I’m now trying to think of a way to display the newest issue from every council. I think it would make a nice traveling display at some of our local Council events. I’m looking forward to standing near it and hearing “Dad (or Grandpa), where were you a Boy Scout?” Wouldn’t it be great if he could point to the collection and tell his young Scout “this council right here?”

As we visit each council, Sandy is posting a photo of me holding one of their CSPs. Something else to make us smile while traveling.

Disappearing Home

September 27, 2012 By John Keatley Leave a Comment

An old friend of the family retired a few years ago. Like me, his career ended earlier than he had planned. Without a reason to stay in the area, he loaded up all his belongings in a trailer and in the back of his truck. He relocated and started a new life.

He didn’t relocate in the traditional way, looking to find some new or exotic place. He went home, to the place where his father and grandfather had lived, where the family still owned property and a few riverfront cottages. He settled into his own little place. After serving in the Navy and spending over twenty years working in the Space Shuttle program he’d been gone all of his adult life. Now, he was back.

He spends almost every morning down having coffee with the locals, and knows everybody by name at the barbershop. He works on tractors and small engines to earn a little spending money, and occasionally runs a tractor or two. No one knows what he used to do. He once worked in the shuttle crew module, testing and preparing the spaceships for their next missions. They don’t need to know.

When we visited him, he pulled up in his old pickup. He wore an old pair of well-worn bib overalls. His rescued golden retriever rode in the passenger seat. With a tear in his eye, he told us how proud he was that he had met John Glenn, who had just passed away. We sat there on the porch reminiscing of our good old days working at Kennedy Space Center. Sitting there, listening to the wind blowing through the trees, we watched the weather change. A large storm front was heading our way.

When the pelting rain drops on the tin roof became unbearably loud we moved inside the walls of his 800 square foot cabin. It no longer sits along the river. The floods a few years ago filled it with water nearly to the ceiling. The interior was ruined, and he lost so many irreplaceable things.

After things dried out, he hired a house moving company. Pulling it across a corn field, they moved it high on a bluff over looking the river. Now eighty feet higher, he feels pretty safe!

The interior walls have been replaced with T-111 exterior siding. They are still unfinished, just the raw wood exposed. It gives the place a rustic charm. There are two small bedrooms and a bathroom. Only three interior doors. The rest of the home is just an L shaped room. In the living room is a good wood stove, and in the kitchen sits an antique table. The washer and drier are right in the kitchen, not hidden from view. They make a great extension to the countertops.

It’s a simple home, and he loves living in it. Isn’t that a wonderful thing: he’s enjoying retirement and is happy. As far as I’m concerned, it just doesn’t get any better than that!