Troop 215 - National Science & Energy Museum and Lost Sea Caves
Location
Oak Ridge Tennessee and Sweetwater Tennessee
Total Driving Mileage
I took two routes. Frankfort to Lost Sea Caves - US127 S from Frankfort to just north of Crossville TN where I joined I40. I40 to I75, and I75 to US68. It was 270.2 miles to the cave.
Home from Sweetwater - I75 to I64. US421 from Midway to Frankfort. It was 243.2 miles home.
513.4 miles total. Filled my truck in Frankfort KY on way to Tennessee, and Sweetwater TN on way home.
Weather
NO RAIN!
58 degrees inside the cave.
Saturday 4 PM arrival at Cave - 48
Sunday 7 AM departure from the Cave - 21
Clothing
I did not wear shorts! At all! I had a board meeting on Saturday morning, so I wore the clothes I had on for the meeting as I drove to Tennessee. When I joined the troop at the Cave, I changed into my "get dirty" clothing. I had my sweat pants, long sleeve shirt, and an old rain coat. I also changed to old shoes.
I didn't need any of it. I wish I had worn shorts. You don't have to get dirty in Lost Sea Caves. If you don't crawl through the smaller caves, you won't get dirty. The bottom of your shoes will get dirty, but that is about it. The first thing I got rid of was my rain coat. It was that warm inside the cave.
Shoes
Old Tennis Shoes the entire time in the cave
Tent
No TENT! I purchased two shower curtains a the dollar store to use as a ground cloth. It made my area for sleeping big, but I was able to keep all my gear clean. I threw away the curtains when we left.
Sleeping Bag
Teton 0 Sleeping bag. I totally didn't need it! I should have used my summer bag. I would have been more comfortable. I used my 0 bag as a blanket, but only after a few hours of trying to fall asleep while it was zipped up.
Main Activity
I had a board meeting for work on Saturday morning, so I couldn't join the troop on the first night of the campout. My wife and I dropped off our boys at the departure site on Friday evening. They left Georgetown on Friday at 6, and my wife and I had a date at a restaurant in Georgetown. The troop drove to Camp Pellissippi which is just north of Knoxville and close to Norris Dam State Park. They slept in the winter lodge. What they didn't know until they arrived is that they would be sleeping on a concrete slab on the floor of the building. I don't think anyone over the age of 18 got any sleep at all that night.
Saturday morning they drove to Oak Ridge Tennessee to the National Science and Energy Museum which is in the middle of the city of Oak Ridge. I was planning on driving to meet them at the museum. I knew how far it was, but I didn't know how long it would take.
My meeting was over at 10:15 Saturday morning. I left Frankfort at 11, but stopped before I left Franklin County to fill my truck with gas. I took US127 South because I looked at a map and saw how close it was to Oak Ridge. I thought this route woulds save me from having to cross Jellico Mountain. This was true. I didn't have to cross the Mountain, but it cost me about an hour and a half. I told myself the entire way there that it didn't matter how long it took. I also knew what I would be passing on the way there.
I stopped at a gas station in Jamestown KY for a small lunch of a sandwich and a Coke Zero. This gas station was about 10 miles north of the dam at Lake Cumberland State Park in Kentucky.
I stopped in Pall Mall Tennessee at the home of Sergeant Alvin York. Sergeant York was a hero of WWI, and his life was captured in a Gary Cooper movie from 1941. SERGEANT YORK HOMEPLACE I was only there for maybe 10 minutes. It is a State Park in Tennessee, and there were two park rangers working in the General Store where I stopped. I told them I studied history in college, and one of the rangers told me that he did too. I was told that if I had been there a week before, I would have seen a WWI reenactment. He said there was a trench on the property, and the Sergeant York State Park was one of the premier WWI Historic Sites in the Country. I would love to go back next year, especially since next year is the 100th anniversary of the US involvement in WWI.
As I got on I40 outside of Crossville, I called Thomas. He told me that they had just left the museum. I was hoping that I could see the museum. Maybe next time I'll see it. I drove to Lost Sea Caves, and arrived only a minute or two after most of the troop arrived. It was a little chilly when we got there. We pulled our vehicles up to the parking lot just below where we enter the cave. We had supper in the parking lot. I was surprised when all of the other Scout troops started to arrive. There must have been 150 scouts in the cave that night.
Inside the cave we dropped off our gear at our "campsite". It was surrounded by porta toilets. It smelled bad! The toilets were right beside the campsites. The campsites were blocked off by wooden boards. We slept directly on the floor of the cave. If you didn't want a dirty sleeping bag and other gear, you had to have some kind of ground tarp. A committee person from our troop suggested we purchase a shower curtain from the dollar store.
Thomas in the campsite
Right after we arrived, we started the tour of the cave. We walked around to look at the big rooms. Some of the spots in the cave were slick. If you have on shoes with no traction, it could be dangerous. My friend Bill went to Lost Sea Caves with his troop recently, and he fell at the bottom of the steps in the entrance. He hurt himself, so he didn't get to see any of the cave.
It was a guided tour. Our guides were Jack, age 17, and Samantha, age 20. Samantha has been working at the cave since she was 15. They are paid employees of the cave. Lost Sea Caves, by the way, is privately owned. It is not a state park. They apparently have visitors all year long. I was told they worked Thanksgiving, and the only holiday the employees don't work is Christmas.
The lake in the cave was nice. The cave has lights in it. You only need a flashlight for small parts of the cave. The lake is 800 feet long, and there is a hidden room that is totally filled with water. That makes this cave the second biggest known lake in a cave in the world. There are Rainbow Trout in the water of the cave. Every boat has a section of the lake where the fish are fed. They are fed dog food. If you eat one of the fish, it will taste like dog food. The fish are huge because they eat so much.
The cave was only discovered in the 1960s. There had been a small tunnel that a young boy crawled through to discover the lake. A few years later, the small tunnel was blasted out to make an entrance that tourists could use.
After the lake, we went to the section of the cave where Scouts could do the entry level crawl. I didn't want to get dirty, so I stayed out of the smaller tunnel. Tyler went in, but didn't crawl. He said you didn't have to crawl if you didn't want to. I spent that time hanging out with one of the younger scouts and the adults. The younger scout said he didn't want to be there because one of his friends from school told him there were cave spiders.
After the smaller cave tour, we went back to our campsite to wait until we left for the difficult tour. Our guides took a long time to get back to us to pick us up, so only a few scouts went on the difficult tour. I took the time to lay down after setting up my camp spot. I turned on my flash and took a few pictures. Although I couldn't see it with the flash off, my body was releasing the heat that my body had produced during the cave tour. It can be seen in the picture below.
All guests of the cave were back at the campsites by 10:30. It was really loud in the cave. Tyler and his friends were playing cards. Thomas was beside me in a group. He was talking to Robert about different kinds of tea. At 11 or 11:30, the lights in the campsites went off. The only main lights still on were close to the porta toilets. When the lights went off, everyone got quiet almost immediately. From the moment everyone got quiet, I could hear snoring. Think about the acoustics in a cave. 5 people snoring can be quite loud.
It was only 3 or 4 minutes after everyone got quiet that the entertainment started. I could hear people farting, and then there would be pockets of giggles that would move through the campsites. It was quite funny. I'm sure some of the adults provided part of the entertainment.
When it was quiet, I started to think about what I was sleeping in. I didn't get the same feeling I had when the troop slept in a submarine. In the submarine I thought a lot about the lack of moving air, and felt a few times like I was suffocating. The cave wasn't like that. Instead I thought about the weight of the mountain that was above my head. It's funny that I don't think about that when I'm laying in my bed at home. The weight of the ceiling in my house could kill me just as fast as the ceiling of the cave if it fell on me. I only thought about the mountain above us for about 10 minutes.
I didn't sleep very well. I was able to get some sleep, but not very much. I was comfortable on the floor, but I couldn't get my temperature right. I would have slept better if I had my sleeping bag liner and my bivy sack, or my summer bag alone. At 6 AM, an alarm on the phone went off from a member of the troop that was in the campsite beside us. They started packing up almost immediately. This caused our group to do the same. There were people all around us still trying to sleep. We left the cave by 6:45. We walked to the top of the steps to exit the cave, and down slope of the hill to the cars.
My memory goes away when I don't sleep very much. After we got back to the cars, I put down my small dry bag that I used to keep my phone, flashlights, and keys in one spot. I then put down my duffel bag. After only a few minutes, I wouldn't remember what I did with my small bag. Since my keys were inside the bag, and I thought I had dropped the bag on the was out of the cave, I went back to the cave to retrace my steps from the camping spot to the car.
It was the oddest thing to go from 21 degrees outside into a cave that was 58 degrees. I had been outside for about 10 minutes, but it was enough time to cool my body off. When I put my foot on the top step of the entrance of the cave, my glasses fogged up immediately. It felt like stepping into a sauna. I went all the way back to the campsite. I didn't see the bag. Tyler was worried that I fell down in the entrance of the cave, so he came inside to make sure I was okay.
Tyler at the entrance of the cave just before leaving Sunday morning.
Since I couldn't find the bag in the cave, we went back to the cars. Thomas was sitting in my truck, and he had started it. He said I had left the bag on the bumper of my car. He had opened the back end of the truck, and put away all the gear.
Since I don't live in Georgetown, I asked if I could take the Baker Boys in my truck. Everyone else had a seatbelt to use in a different automobile, so it was okay. We stopped at McDonalds in Sweetwater beside the interstate to get breakfast. We joined the rest of the troop there. Since it was Robert's birthday, we sang happy birthday to him three times. Each time embarrassed him just a little bit more than the last time. The price of regular unleaded gas was $1.87/gallon at the gas station across the street. I filled up there before we left.
Thomas and Tyler and I stopped in London KY to eat. We stopped first at Golden Corral. There isn't one in Central Kentucky anymore since they all closed down. We found out that it would cost more than $17 dollars a person for us to eat there. We left and went to Frisch's for breakfast buffet. That was much less expensive.
We made it home around 2 on Sunday. We didn't have any gear that needed to be dried out, other than Tyler's sleeping bag that had picked up a little bit of moisture.
This was a good trip. I enjoyed the cave. It was kind of a long way to go for a campout, but if our troop only does this once every 3 or 4 years, it is totally worth it.
Extra Gear - No extra gear on this trip.
Food -
Friday night cracker barrel unknown
Saturday morning They had eggs and bacon at Camp Pellissippi. Not sure how they cooked the food.
Saturday lunch They had fried chicken from Walmart that is right beside the museum in Oak Ridge.
Saturday supper - Sub sandwiches and chips purchased from Walmart.
Saturday Cracker Barrel - none
Sunday morning - McDonalds in Sweetwater
Nights Camping - 1.
Next Campout - Troop 215 will be visiting the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton Ohio. We will be sleeping in Adirondack Shelters at a nearby Boy Scout Camp. After that is Troop 1 Homeless Campout in Frankfort. Only 3 more night of camping this year.
Total Camping nights in 2016 - 24 nights so far this year.
Graffiti from a Confederate Soldier in the cave.
More graffiti from the 1800s
This is the ceiling of the cave that was above my head in the campsite. The ceiling was about 20 feet above where I slept on the floor.
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