We went camping with our daughter’s American Heritage Girls troop at Rickwood Cavern State Park. We got an early start on camping as Katie Beth’s school let out at 1 o’clock on Friday since they were having parent-teacher conferences for the first terms report cards. (By the way, Katie Beth got all A’s, hoot!) We had our campsite setup hours before everyone else started to arrive.
We should have packed more bedding as it got very cool at night. One night was as low as 40°F. But, the weather was great during the day for all of our activities.
The park has a nice playground, a pool with a high dive, a couple trials, and the cavern. The cavern is small and they have tours 4 times a day. The cave tour costs: $17.00 for age 13 to adult, $8.00 for age 5 to 12. In the past, cave was setup as fall out shelter and still holds the remains of the supplies from the Civil Defense. The park grounds are covered with many aquatic fossils as Alabama was historically a seabed.
On Friday evening, the campers played at the playground. On Saturday, we did the cave tour and walked Fossil Mountain Hiking Trail. Everyone enjoyed seeing all of the fossils in the rocks. On Sunday, we broke camp. We had to get back to town for a birthday party, but the rest of the group went to the Holy Door of Mercy at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.
We learned more about camping on this trip. We need better cold weather sleeping gear. Blankets take too much space so I see better sleep bags in our future. A burn restriction prevented wood fires so the cooking plans had to be adjusted and people were expecting a large log fire to keep them warm in the evenings.
You can see more photos here. Remember, the username and password are “Friends” and “Photos”.