As Wanderlust's summer office assistant, my typical day includes answering phones and booking tours for our wonderful guests. After phone conversations about paddling pristine mountain lakes, exploring the crevices of wilderness caves or journeying into the belly of an ancient volcano, the confines of the office start looking a little bleary. Luckily, one of the perks of the job is that I get to hop on tours and experience them as a guest might.
A few weeks ago I joined one of our fantastic guides Jeff with a group of guests and descended into Skeleton Cave. Skeleton Cave is a lava-formed wilderness cave outside of Bend. Jeff, who spent his college years studying geology, did an amazing job explaining how the caves were first formed and developed.
We maneuvered the cave's sandy-bottomed darkness with headlamps and helmets, scrambling and crouching through a few tighter crevices. Jeff kept a close eye on the group, and even paused to replace the batteries in my dimming headlamp.
The tour was filled with fun local history and stories (like how Skeleton Cave earned its name!) and Jeff even pointed out surrounding plants and geographical features during the drive.
We emerged from the cave to discover that it had rained pretty heavily while we were underground. We had to watch our step to avoid the small streams of water flowing into the mouth of the cave- something Jeff had never even seen before.
I ended my afternoon caving adventure feeling that I'd accomplished a great feat and was excited to learn so many fun stories and facts about Central Oregon. I've concluded, and I think our vacationing guests would agree that sometimes it's just good to get out of the office :)
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