We took a trip to Oregon Caves National Monument and brushed up on some of our geology. Unfortunately, we were not able to see the bats, but we were able to have a very interesting tour through the cave, and the kids were able to earn another Junior Ranger Badge.
A view into the cave.
A view of some of the stalactites.
This is called flowstone. It’s kind of pretty. You can tell how it got it’s name.
The next picture, even though it is out of focus, was very interesting to me. If you look closely, you can see graffiti on the rocks. These are the signatures of some of the early explorers of the cave. One of the interesting things about this graffiti is that a new layer of rock has formed over the top of the graffiti. What’s neat about that is that there are dates in some of the signatures, so the geologists have been able to measure the thickness of rock that has formed over the graffiti and then look at the date and therefore calculate the rate that the rocks in that cave are forming.
Here are the kids saying their Junior Ranger Pledge. (This is their least favorite part of doing the Junior Ranger programs, because a lot of the rangers ask them to promise to eat their broccoli or to tell their mother how beautiful she is or to give the ranger a chocolate cake or some unrelated thing like that and .)
