“Whoa!” I said aloud as I looked at the screen before me. How could this be? I should have known about it, right? It’s not supposed to be this convenient. I’m supposed to have to dive hours for adventure. Wrong. Let’s scroll around and check. Okay. Let’s try Google Maps. Still checks out. It must be true.
Time to text Rob Baldus. “Want to go caving?”
“Sure, I’m free from 1 till 6″ came the instant reply.
RIGHT ON MY DOORSTEP
Google Earth revealed that another of Knox County’s caves rests just across the road from my home, in a pocket of woods between the boundary of a golf course and a railroad track. What a fantastic way to have a “backyard” adventure.
Rob drove his Smart Car to my house and we started walking right from my doorstep. We walked back into my neighborhood and through a strip of woods onto railroad tracks. These we followed across a railroad bridge over Ebenezer Road in Knoxville.
Railroad bridge across Ebenezer Road
Rob leads
It wasn’t long until we veered into some woods where we knew the cave to be. Using Rob’s iPhone GPS, we wandered around looking for signs until we found a large sink.
Unfortunately, this sink looked like an illegal dump of some sort, filled with rotting wood and natural debris, as well as old tires, chicken wire, barrels and other bits of trash.
The sink
Finally we spotted the entrance … the tiny entrance. It looked to me like a belly-crawl into a shaft for a long distance, but closer scrutiny revealed it would likely open up. Still, going into a dark hole over leaves and mud in a place like that is no picnick. I lifted Rob’s SureFire E2L Outdoorsman and went in feet first.
The hole
It opened up almost immediately into a room under the hill. It slanted diagonally downward and was much taller than it was wide. Everything was slimy mud, expect a few rocks hanging down. In the back of the cave, Rob spotted a baby bat hanging upside down asleep. This for me was the best moment of the adventure. It was so cute and serene, hanging with its wings folded up tight like a blanket around it. I love seeing bats flying around at night, but to go into one’s lair to see it in the afternoon was a fascinating insight into local nature. Who knew this tiny cave here in a dump in the woods played home to this bat? Bats are one of my favorite animals, if you couldn’t tell. What a treat.
The cave led nowhere, but I wonder if this hasn’t changed since the book description was written, or if mud was blocking further progress. We packed it out, waited on a train to pass and returned, but not until after we’d climbed a sloping rock in the woods.
We also saw one not-so-happy bit of wildlife.
This bird is definately not the word
Have you heard? The bird… sometimes isn’t the word.
CHECK IT AGAIN!!!
I know this is an old post, and you may have heard, but Ten Mile Creek cave is different than the cave you went into. It has an entrance large enough that you don’t have to crawl. The last time I was there, though, it had a grate over the entrance. It’s a massive cave! Larger than the houses that surround it and sit on top of it. It’s in that same area, on the left side of the tracks and probably 1/2 a mile from the road.
Yeah, I know. I found the real one later, but I don’t remember if we blogged it. Anyhow, I know where the real one is. What I found was just a glorified muddy hole int he ground.