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[jadebox]

That's one of the places I would like to take my wife in our new RV. I went there many times as a kid, with school groups, scouts, and my family. It was a beautiful park ... I assume it still is.

When I was maybe ten years old, we went there with my grandmother. During the tour of the main caverns, the guide, as a joke, stopped us in a chamber with a low ceiling to tell the history of the caverns. As we stood, bending over to keep from hitting our heads, the guide described how workers were paid a dollar a day to excavate the caverns. "They should have paid them $2 and told them to dig it deeper," I said. A while later, my grandmother showed us a letter that she received from Readers Digest. She had written the event up as a story and submitted to the magazine for one of their columns. The letter said that they weren't going to print the story but thanked her for the submission.

During a later visit with the Boy Scouts, we explored some of the smaller caves in the park. As I recall crawling on my stomach through those tight caves with others in front and behind me, I'm starting to feel a little queasy. It's amazing to me that I wasn't claustrophobic at all back then. I needed a Valium to survive a few minutes in a MRI machine not long ago.

One of the things I thought was cool (pun intended) about living in North Florida was how the spring-fed rivers and creeks were always about the same temperature all year long. So, in the summer, as you walked along a stream, the breeze across the water would feel like air conditioning. I especially remember that feeling while exploring the Florida Caverns park. Hiking through the woods was cool in more ways than one!