indian echo caverns field trip...

As I mentioned in this post, my kids have a lot of field trips during the last weeks of school.  One field trip that I was looking forward to was Luke's class trip to the Indian Echo Caverns.  As soon as I saw this permission slip, I signed up the next day.  I totally remember when my parents took my sisters and I to Virginia on vacation and we got to go to the Luray Caverns.  We also stayed in a horrible motel that had lots of spiders and we found a girly magazine in the room.  Yup!  That's the sum total of what I remember about that vacation.  I'm sure my parents are thrilled they spent so much time and money on those stellar childhood memories.

It took about an hour and a half to get to Indian Echo Caverns.  The kids in my area all did really well with the time it took to get there and enjoyed their bus ride.  Luke's class of kids all really get along well and it is fun to see how they have changed since I first met them in Kindergarten last year.

The teacher assigned each chaperone two children.  Luke was super excited when he learned we were paired with Aviana.  He loves her in a totally platonic way and she seems to like him back.  They did hold hands on the bus on the way home but he said it doesn't mean they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

Our day started with playing on the playground and going to the petting zoo.  The kids all loved the playground but declared the petting zoo really lame.  It really wasn't that great of a petting zoo and half the class live on farms so the are used to getting up close and personal with animals.

 We then took our turn in the caverns.  Our tour guide, David, was great.  He gave us a lot of information that the kids just loved and hung on his every word.  No they didn't.  The adults all learned a lot and the kids had fun looking at all the rock formations.  I took some pictures inside the caverns which do not do the formations justice but sort of turned out.  Luke is not a fan of dark enclosed spaces, he gets that from me.  So I wasn't sure how he would do when we got really far into the caves.  But he was fine as long as he was close to either me or Avianna.  At one point, the lights were all turned out and it was pitch dark.  Luke practically climbed me in an effort to get close but he was fine.  The tour took about 45 minutes and was really great.

 After the caverns tour, the kids got to pan for gems.  Which means they each got a bag of sand with different rocks in it and they got to dump the rocks into a box with a screen and held it in a trough of running water.  The kids all enjoyed discovering which gems they 'found'.

After that, we headed back to the bus for our trip to school.  The kids all declared it the best field trip ever!  Of course, they still have a few more field trips and field day before the end of the year so that may change...

What was your favorite field trip as a kid?