New Accessible Adventures

Terry and I tried out a few new places in the last few weeks and found out they are fairly wheelchair friendly! Rock City and Raccoon Mountain Caverns (unlike that other cave here in town)!
  

Rock City has a trail from the main entrance all the way to the lookout where you can see the 7 states! If you use your imagination. The coolest thing was the the birding  you can do from that point. We saw several hawks level with the eye. Terry was able to push the entire way though some people may need assistance.

Raccoon Mountain Caverns was the most exciting though! I had never been there and had no idea what I was missing out on. The entrance fee is really cheap but Terry and I had free tickets. Upon entering the store, the kid at the desk said "sure you can go in! I can have someone take you right in. You can't get through the whole thing but we'll take you where you can go!"

The girl who was our tour guide was amazing. Terry and I were the only ones on the tour :-) Turns out Terry is only able to get into the first room of the cave which is level with the store entrance. However, for being just one room, it was spectacular! The room is right outside the Crystal Palace room but we could see some of it from where we were. There were huge columns, lots of flow stone, and several stalactites and stalagmites.

The guide was working on her master's degree in underground water studies and was a life long caver. If anyone has ever visited the Howard's Waterfall Cave, it's in her yard! This lady took about 30 to 45 minutes in the front room showing Terry all the details of the cave, the amazing formations, the waterflow patterns, and described the formation of the cave. Terry was able to get some good pics as well.


Raccoon Mountain Caverns is trying to restore the cave to it's natural state which really impressed Terry. For this reason, they are able to offer numerous educational programs for groups that want to study cave ecology, rocks and minerals, etc. They have several tours including an eco-tour, 4 hour, 6 hour, and 12 hour tours. They also have camping right on sight!


This sounds kind of like an add for Raccoon Mountain and it is! If you are looking for an accessible cave this is the one you want!


Have an awesome weekend!

Raccoon Mountain Crystal Palace