Ape Caves/ Trail of Two Forests

Last Saturday Paul and I took the boys up to the Mt St Helens area for some fun and adventure. We had been talking about going to Ape Caves for some time, and were finally able to get up there. Rowan had been super excited about going and insistent that we go up until Friday night. Then he decided he might actually be too scared to go in the caves.

When we got there he was very reluctant to enter the caves. We reassured him that we had lots of flashlights and would hold his hand the whole time, and convinced him to give it a try. Within about 5 minutes of being in the cave he was LOVING it, and we had to remind him to stick with us and not get too far ahead. Then he started saying he didn't need to be with us because he's a "man of adventure"! What a nut!

We decided to start with the lower cave, which is the easier of the two caves. Most of that cave is about as big as a subway tunnel, although the ground is rocky and you have to do a bit of climbing over large rocks in portions of it. It is really amazingly cool in there.

We saw the "meatball", and also the 3 meatballs that are lined up together.

Grayson and Rowan were great explorers, and enjoyed looking for neat formations in the cave. They also had fun trying to sneak a little ahead of us, hide, and then act like grumpy cave trolls when we "found" them.

We had planned to just do the lower cave, but even though it was a chilly 42 degrees in there they were chomping at the bit to do some more exploring. We explored part of the more challenging upper cave, but it was clear that we weren't quite prepared enough for that, and at that point we had already been down in the caves for about an hour and half and were getting tired and hungry.

The upper cave is definitely going to require headlamps instead of flashlights since there will be a lot more climbing over rocks which will require both hands.

We will definitely be going back!

We also made a trip to see the trail of Two Forests while we were there.

This is a nice easy trail that shows some of the cool effects of the lava flow.

There are a bunch of neat tree casts, where the lava encased the large tree trunks and formed impressions of the trees.

There is an optional section of the trail called "the crawl" where you can crawl through an underground tunnel that was formed when the lava encased and then burned out a large fallen tree. Paul and I opted not to go through it, since it did require actual crawling.

Rowan was initially scared about going through it since Paul and I weren't going, but after he saw Grayson and Fuller make it through in one piece he went through.

He ended up liking it so much he ended up going through it about 5 more times before we finally had to go.

It was a great family day, and we saw some places we are excited to go back and explore some more. I think our next adventures in the area may be Lake Cave or Lava Canyon.