Sunday, the 5th, we said goodbye to to Betsy, Pat and Courtney as they had to go home. The rest of us tried to find Mitchell Cave. It's one of those caves where you get to 8/10's of a mile away from it and then have to climb and go over a mountain, go down the other side to a stream and then climb up 300 feet again to the small cave entrance. There was Rita, myself, Matt, John and Darcy in my car, while Kyle and his father (Steve) and uncle were in another car. After following the best route, which turned out to have been changed by Mother Nature and landowners, we finally stopped alongside the road and talked to an elderly fellow. He thought we needed to father down the road, take a dirt road up the other side of the mountain and come in from the back side. This proved to be good directions as we were able to follow the topographic map to where there was a path that went down the mountain to the stream in the direction of the cave. However, the road was blocked with multiple posted signs and there was nobody at the quaint home where the road originated. Oh well, that's caving. Kyle's group decided to go back to Pennsylvania then.
Rita, myself, Matt, John and Darcy decided to go back to cave Hamilton Cave. We got there in the late afternoon. By the time we entered Hamilton Cave, it was twilight. Trying to get back the "air blower" proved to be beyond us. Hamilton Cave is a maze cave and we went back and forth, back and forth, in the maze and never did find it. Upon leaving the cave, it narrows down to several passages about a yard in diameter. Now the little brown bats were flying in and out of the cave in earnest. Almost to the entrance I heard behind me, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Turning around, I could see Matt doing a little gig and then there was a little brown bat in the mud below me. It had flown smack into the upper middle of his chest and held on. At the same time, another cave group was entering the cave and were now seated laughing themselves silly. We had to retrieve the bat from the muddy floor and gently place him on a rock ledge. After getting over our little incident, we said goodbye to the other cavers and left to go get cleaned up. The next day we packed up and came home after a really good trip.
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