Chapter 9, Cottondale Florida and Florida Caverns
- traci wilson
- May 13
- 4 min read
We pulled in at the Hitchin Post RV Park, a quaint little private ‘mom and pop’ style park, in early afternoon. The park was well kept and quite eclectic with funny signs, yard art and lots of patriotic stuff as well as a small keeping of farm critters—chickens, rabbits and goats. It was very reasonably priced, and we had full hookups!
We only had two days in this location, really just a stopover point to our next destination. When Dave booked the site he didn’t realize that there was a cavern in the area—we seriously never thought there might be caves in Florida since it’s so flat—but since there was, we had to check it out!
The cave is located at Florida Caverns State Park. In addition to the cave there are a few miles of hiking trails in the area. Originally we planned to hike there with the dogs then drop them off at the trailer and go back to see the cave, but it was further to the park than we’d expected, so we found a doggie daycare where we could drop the dogs off for a few hours. It was actually the nicest daycare we’d taken them to this trip and both Maggie and Zoe were quite excited as the staff led them back to the play area (Kenai is always more reserved).
We had to reserve a timeslot for the guided tour of the cavern. Our original plan was to go hiking during the morning while it was cool then do the cave in the afternoon, but a series of local school field trips changed that plan as all the afternoon slots were already full. The only time we could get was 10:30 a.m. so we took a short hike along the bluff trail to tunnel cave (a small shallow cave along the trail). There were an abundance of birds, lizards, and wildflowers along the narrow trail that wove through lush mostly deciduous forest. It was short but very pretty.
The cave itself was small compared to others we’ve been to, but it had some unique features just the same. One of them being the lively and talkative tour guide who did his job with great enthusiasm. He was quite intent on finding a bat for us to see, which we did, but I’m pretty sure Dave saw it before the guide, although we didn’t have the heart to tell him that.
The cave had been worked on by the Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) who did the work of widening the passages and creating the paths all by hand. The men used to embed their white dinner bowls in the ceiling to increase the light given off by their lanterns, and a few still remain.
You could also see various fossils of sea life, shells and such, embedded in the cave walls as this used to be an ancient seabed. It also had several underground pools, one of which was shaped like south America.
There were the usual cave formations as well, stalagmites and stalactites, flowstones (looks like snot), columns (where the stalagmites and stalactites merge together), ribbons, draperies and even cave pearls! I was impressed by the variety in such a small cave, which was only three quarters of a mile in length and only 65 feet at the deepest point. We could only go down 60 feet because the deeper section was underwater. We learned that the cave floods whenever they get a lot of rain, but our exuberant trail guide said they never close it unless there’s a hurricane. The cave was also warmer (around 65° year around) than other caves we’ve visited due to being shallower. I actually enjoyed the experience immensely and thought it well worth the $15 admission.
After the cave we took a longer hike on the sinkhole trail to connect with the river trail. We didn’t see the turn we were supposed to take and ended up heading the wrong way, which we didn’t realize till we’d gone a long way, and the trail abruptly ended at the river. It made the hike much further than planned and wasn’t as scenic as the earlier hike we’d taken. It was also very hot by this time! Dave didn’t take water because we hadn’t expected to stay out so long, so we shared my bottle. That hike ended up being just over four miles, twice as long as expected.
It was still a great day even with the mess up on the second hike. We picked up our tired puppies, worn out from a day of frolicking with new dog friends, and went back to the trailer to prepare to leave for our next destination the following morning. We will be going to visit with my sister Mary in Quitman Georgia for a couple days, then we’ll set our out for Yemassee South Carolina, our jump off point for Congaree National Park.
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