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| Gazing upon the vast opening of Dancehall Cave with my Uncle. |
I’ve lived in Iowa for my whole life and have always been excited to leave the state whenever I get the chance. I had never thought anything as cool as Maquoketa Caves State Park existed in this corn filled state. However, my thoughts have know changed about Iowa, or at least Southeast Iowa anyways. As my Uncle and I pulled into the state parked we were already surprised with the elevation. Hills? Hills in Iowa? No way! We got our wristbands to go into the cave and off we went to explore. The first cave we went into was Dancehall Cave, the biggest cave stretching out 1,100 feet. I was a little bummed that they had made a concrete trail and light up the cave but it was still very cool.
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| Dancehall Cave |
After going through Dancehall we made our way under the 50’ natural bridge to the other side of the park with lots of the smaller caves that made for some cool climbs.
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| 50' Natural Bridge |
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| Crawling through Match Cave. |
We explored all the caves on North side of the park, so we made our way down to the South side of the park that has some bigger caves. One of the really cool caves was Rainy Day cave which had looked like it was carved out by a natural spring that came out of the cave. Barbell Cave which was also in the south side of the park had a really cool climb/crawl. To get in you had to climb up 4.5’ and then crawl about 20’ before you got to a room which you could sit up in. Inside Barbell there was another room beside the one we crawled to. However, the window into it look too small for me to fit through so I passed on that room, which I now regret not trying.
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| A trail to the South Side of Maquoketa Caves. |
I cannot believe how awesome Maquoketa Caves State Park was! I was really impressed that they let you go and explore wherever you liked, plus they kept all of the caves pretty natural with no cement or lighting besides Dancehall Cave. I never thought I would find anything this cool in Iowa. I would definitely recommend checking it out.
