TUSCUMBIA-Sequoyah Caverns and Ellis Homestead, a mainstay in the NW Alabama tourism for decades will be closing September 3, 2013. In 2010, it was rated the No. 1 thing to do in Alabama by tripadvisor.com and was inducted into the North Alabama Tourism Hall of Fame.
As this was one cave I’ve been meaning to see, but haven’t, I planned a visit for this
past Saturday. Mom planned to go, but after she popped her knee out and fell Wednesday and drove to Nashville and back Thursday then mowed her acre yard and ran the lawn sweeper and dumped fifteen loads of grass out of it, she was out of gas. Gracie a good friend from work planned to go, and Mom would probably be miffed at our normal no time schedule and any side trip possible, it probably worked 
out for the best. Once we went to Birmingham to Moundville, and landed up going to several other places, decided we wanted to go to Macaroni Grill for dinner. We didn’t know where the one in Birmingham was so we came home via Huntsville and had dinner at the Macaroni Grill there. Things like that drive Mom up the wall , and Saturday’s trip was one of several detours, especially after we missed a turn off in a construction zone and had a guy selling watermelons near the caverns tell us to take a right at the T on 
highway 11. Reckon he would have told us left if we had bought a melon from him? I wanted a yellow meat one. Finally we made it to the caverns. Gracie kept looking for a barn with See Rock City on it, and she finally got her wish when we pulled up to the parking area. While standing near the fence taking a picture of the barn I was licked and slimed by a Brown Swiss cow. I told Gracie that the cow knows a farm girl when she sees one.
John Jones the owner at age 79 has decided to retire and due to lack 
of interest of other family members in taking over management of the caverns they will close. According to the son-in-law of Mr. Jones, they have not been approached by anyone wanting to lease the caverns so they will close in another week. The property known as the Ellis Homestead has been in family since 1841. A copy of the land grant is displayed in the visitors’ center.
There was a good crowd there to visit the caverns and also a car 
show going on. We 
purchased the next available tickets which were in a half hour, so we wondered about the old cabins and car show. I took a nice picture of a 1928 Model T with the Rock City barn in the back ground. A peacock was being chased by the kids and finally found one who wanted to feed it instead of chasing it. A couple who we exchanged taking pictures for each other turned out to be a policeman from Birmingham and his wife. He was present at the UPS crash and we were almost late for our tour time while discussing photography of accidents.
Our guide, the owners son-in-law told us the normal cave visit spiel, not to touch anything as the stalactites and stalagmites which may have taken hundreds of years to form are fragile and may break. The first thing I do after taking my first picture, started to turn and whack the side of my head on a stalactite, almost falling on a baby in a stroller. It was about the size of a traffic cone, and my sore head can testify that it wasn’t fragile.
I have to admit I had to Google to find out the difference between a stalactites and stalagmite: stalactites and 
stalagmites are what are known as speleothems, deposits of minerals that form into cave structures and line the insides of a cave. Stalactites are the formations that hang from the ceilings of caves like icicles, while stalagmites look like they’re emerging from the ground and stand up like a traffic cones.
The tour lasted about 45 minutes and didn’t disappoint. It has several “looking glass lakes” which reflect the ceiling off the surface of the water. I tried to take most of my pictures without a flash so I could get that reflection. Pictures taken without a flash just showed the formations without the ceiling reflections. We didn’t get to see any of the petroglyphs or waterfalls of the cavern.
After our cave visit, Gracie mentioned that she hadn’t been to Desota Falls, so we headed in that direction. First a late 
lunch was called for and passed the turn off to the falls and went to the Desota State lodge. This was the first place that we’ve been to 
that didn’t charge an arm and a leg for a glass of chardonnay. We didn’t have time to visit the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) museum which built most of the park and decided a trip in the fall was in order and headed to the falls. After sitting and admiring the falls for a while, it was time to head home. At the turn at Mentone, we spied a bed and breakfast called the Mentone Springs Hotel built in 1884. It also had an art gallery that we had to check out. One of the owners said that the best foliage time was the middle of October and mentioned that they also had an arts festival during that time. Road trip!
Twelve hours after leaving in the morning, we finally made it back home.
