Branson - Day 3 (Part II) - Marvel Cave\Little FIsh

I hope to wrap up our Branson trip posts this week. With the time suck of looking for a house, I've had none of that leisure time stuff to focus on my blog. I know, I know, I need to get my priorities straight, right? So, without further ado, here are our fun cave pictures from Branson.

After the fun of the morning playing in the ball pit, the group split ways. Presley, Ryker and Marcy went off to explore other areas of Silver Dollar City while Jody, Reece, Mike, Dylan and I headed to wait in line for Marvel Caves. Apparently, this would not be my first visit to the caves. However, since I was a wee little thing, just 1 and a half-ish years old, it would be the first time I'd remember my trip to the cave. As proof of my first visit there, my Mom sent me the group picture that they took for every tour back in the day:

Marvel Caves 1978
Burch Family Trip
The red arrows indicate where our groups was standing...spread out all over the place.
Top Row - My Pipaw Burch, my Mom holding brother Jamie, my Mimaw Burch, my Dad with me in a backpack.
Bottom Row - Jody standing with the other kids.

Although we did line up on the same platform where that picture was taken, we just got our introduction to our tour guides there, some basic info on our trek and then continued on into the cave. Today, they take a picture of just your party inside the first big room in the cave:

Me, Dylan, Mike, Reece and Jody

When you first enter Marvel Caves, you are in a VERY large cave "room" that they call the cathedral room. It is quite impressive to come in from the top of that room, see the formations in the distance that millions of years of cave activity have formed, descend many many stairs to the base of that room and then see the light peeking in from the outside. Dylan was very excited to see the first formation from afar and deemed it to look like a dragon!

Light Peering Into the Cathedral Room

Looking Down - That Line is the Covered Path WAY Down at the Bottom of the Cathedral Room

The Dragon!

Me, Dylan and Reece in Front of the (Not Seen) Dragon

Looking Up to the Top of the Cathedral Room

While we were waiting in line for our tour, Dylan had a bit of a melt down (thanks to not having good night sleep or naps for days at this point) and we almost abandoned the trip. However, once we were on the move (and stayed on the move), he was fine and actually really enjoyed the tour. We always ended up at the back of the group and only caught the tail end of what the tour guide stopped to tell folks, which worked out fine for wiggly Dylan since we were never forced to stand still for long. Plus, Jody and Reece had already had a tour earlier during their trip that week (with a more experienced tour guide) and filled us in on all the interesting stories.

There were more than a couple of times I got pretty nervous with a toddler (holding his lovey) being just on the other side of a railing to a very long drop off. I definitely kept a tight hold on him (when I wasn't actually holding him) and also grabbed onto his lovey ("yaya") several times as well. If that lovey had been thrown over into the deep abysses, we would have NEVER seen it again! That loss would have been even bigger than the loss of Mike's IPhone on the roller coaster earlier that day.

After our fun cave tour, we met back up with the rest of our gang and called it a day at Silver Dollar City. We went back to our respective hotels. Then Mike, Dylan and I headed over to Jody's hotel and headed to the pool to cool off. Dylan was more interested in showing off his guns and moving the patio furniture around.

Mike was able to get him in the pool for just little bits here and there though.

All the other kids (and dads) had fun cooling off as well. I'm not much of a pool person so I mostly followed Dylan around while he played with the patio table. Then, it was burgers on the grill and watching Tangled at the condo.

This was our last full day with Jody's gang and we only had the next morning left to hang out and play with them.