Cave Springs

Ever since reading a magazine article about Cave Springs, Georgia, several years ago I've wanted to check it out. It is a little town near Rome with...you guessed it: a cave and a spring. When we found out a friend of ours grew up swimming there we decided to make a joint family outing of it. The mouth of the spring is protected by a stone platform and metal grate. Locals actually bring jugs to collect drinking water. A few feet away you can wade in the stream and throw food to the fish. The main attraction is a one-acre, concrete pool about one hundred yards downstream. Since the pure spring water continually flows through the pool, I anticipated splashing and playing in sparkling clear blue waters. The catch is that while the water is clean it is not treated (and I assume the pool is never drained and cleaned) so the bottom and sides are fairly slimy. It wasn't so much gross as it was hard to get around. We kept slipping and sliding and finally settled on sort of standing in one place. Cold and refreshing, but not as delightful as the Itchetucknee tubing trips of my youth.

I was pleasantly surprised by the cave. For the $1 entrance fee I expected it to be about the size of a small closet, but it turned out to be a real cave. We walked down a tall, narrow corridor to a lighted room about 15x40 with maybe a 30 foot ceiling. There were a few little tunnels off that room which you could crawl down if you didn't mind smacking your head on a rock in the pitch black (which I did). The kids enjoyed a brief exploration of the twists and turns. If I had remembered from college days how filthy cave mud is I would have dressed them all in their grubby swim suits.

Final verdict on Cave Springs: a fun day with friends, but now that we've checked it off our list probably not worth the drive to go back.