Meramec Caverns

We spent the afternoon underground, in Meramec Caverns (about 60 miles west of St Louis).  The outside was pretty unimpressive- a tourist trap type of place, with dozens of signs as advertisement, a dismal hotel, campgrounds barely above the river, the main building with a leaking roof, and an enormous parking lot that (in the middle of winter) had all of ten cars.  Inside the caves, it was a totally different story.  The caves were  very interesting and beautiful-we only saw a mile of dozens of miles of caves in this system.  There were some extremely rare formations which we probably did not appreciate to the fullest.  The caves also have an interesting history- some of the largest "rooms" were used a storage area for soldiers during the Civil War, a ballroom during the 30s and 40s, and eve at one point some hidden places served as a hideout for Jesse James.  Mariel had a great time (she was just a little sad that the bats were hibernating).  Noella was pretty tired of being carried around, but I was rather reluctant to put her down in there!  The tour ends with a "musical show" including lights being flashed on a huge stalagtite/stalagmite formation.  The ridiculous seriousness/ campiness of it reminds me (on a much smaller scale) of Stone Mountain in Georgia.  As we were leaving, Patrick snuck into the store and bought a pink dyed stone slice for Mariel.  In the car, he gave her the paper bag with her gift as a suprise, telling her it was something very special.  She reached into the bag, pulled out the index card that had a paragraph on the origins of the stone, looked at it dubiously, and said "Well, this isn't really that exciting."  We told her to look in the bag again, and her reaction to the actual gift was much better, including a gasp of sheer joy when she saw that it was pink.