This is a partnered post with Cloud 9 Living. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
This past weekend I went on an trip for the day with my daughter Hailey. We took a drive to Murphys California to Moaning Cavern Park to go their 3 hour Adventure Trip that included rappelling, wild caving and soaring through the air on their 1500 ft zip line!
This wasn’t my first time to Moaning Cavern Park. I actually have been there years ago when I was a kid with my mom and my best friend where we did only a walking tour. I was really excited to be able to go back with one of my children to show them the awesome cave that I remember from my childhood.
Instead of just doing the basic 45 minute walking tour I wanted to experience the full adventure with my daughter. Once we arrived at the park our day started with with getting geared up to do a rope rappel down inside Moaning Cavern. This rope rappel was 165 and something that I will NEVER ever forget. My cell phone didn’t take the best of pictures but here you can see the ropes that we rappelled down to get to the bottom to go onto our next part of our cave adventure.
I will admit that I am afraid of heights. I am also one that believes that you only live once so there are times when I step out of my comfort zone to experience something that I can brag and say that I did. Doing the rappel down that rope to the bottom of the cave was probably one of the scariest things I have ever done. At first when you are going down you have the walls of the cave to brace your feet on but once you get about 65-70 feet down there is no wall and you are left with a freefall rappel that had me a little shaky.
When I made it to the bottom and took off my gear I felt proud. I went before my daughter which allowed me to watch her come down after me. I will say that I was a little scared watching her come down but she did it like a champ. After our group of five made it to the bottom, it was time to get a little dirty and crawl and climb around the cave.
Below is the map of the Moaning Cavern. I have marked in pink the 165 rappel that we accomplished. Also marked in green is the area that is referred to as the Moaning Cavern Crawl. This is the part of the adventure where you get dirty and where you need those elbow pads, knee pads and the hard had with a light.
Although you can choose to end the tour when you are done rappelling, there was no way that I was backing out on the rest of the fun even though I knew I was a little out of shape.
You will never know what the inside of a cave looks like until you are inside of it, climbing and crawling through spaces you would have never thought of. Once we were crawling around our awesome tour guide Tim showed us the different areas of the cave that had fun names like the Roach Motel, Meat Grinder, Godzillas Nostril and the Pancake Room to name a few.
Out of all those spaces we went adventured through, the Pancake Room was the most challenging for me. I had strength and used muscles I never knew I had.
My daughter had a blast on our adventure too! Every time I looked she was smiling!
During the caving adventure we had an awesome tour guide name Tim. I am glad that we got Tim as a guide because not only he great at his job and super friendly, he also helped us get some really good photos to capture the memories. If you happen to go to Moaning Cavern and want to go on this caving adventure, be sure to ask for Tim because even the other employees says he rocks!
Once we were done crawling through the cave the adventure didn’t end. It was now time to climb the historic spiral staircase. These stairs along with the switchback staircases have you climbing 234 steps to the top. I was out of breath but made it!
After a nice cold water from the gift shop we got geared up for the next part of our adventure. It was time to ride the the 1,500 ft zip line. For this I had to leave my phone/camera in the car so I didn’t get a picture of me on the zip line but you can see below the launching deck and the twin lines that go above the trees.
The zip line was a BLAST! This wasn’t my first time zip lining but I was nervous until I started soaring through the air. My daughter and I both were able to zip line at the same time so it was great seeing her smiling and even going with no hands.
This fun adventure with my daughter was booked through the Cloud 9 Living website For those that want to experience an adventure like this, check out the adventures available in your area by visiting: www.cloud9living.com. Right now you can use promo code: dadsdayME15 to save $15 off your order. Promo code valid now thru 6/22/15.
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