I had last Wednesday off of work, in effort to make extra SUMMER MEMORIES with My Son, Soon Off to College. I had suggested going to Laurel Caverns, and a quick glance at This Blog told me we hadn’t been there since 2017!! Chooch originally said sure, because he likes that there is a mini golf course there. But then I went to their website and saw that mini golf is NOW DEFUNCT. I told him and he was all harumphing about it or whatever, but I didn’t think that this changed our course. So, I proceeded to wake him up the next morning, saying that I wanted to go soon and he was like BUT THERE IS NO MINI GOLF so me being me, I threw a hissy fit and said, “FINE. WE’LL DO NOTHING TODAY THEN. I AM SO GLAD I TOOK THE DAY OFF.”

Who is the kid in this sitch, though, for real.

Anyway, he came downstairs after a bit, all showered and ready to go.

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” I spat, and he calmly said, “To Laurel Caverns.”

I tried to keep up my Mommy Scorned demeanor, but really I was like, “Yay!” and then he even drove too!

It takes about 45 minutes to get there, maybe an hour, who can be sure. We chatted the whole time BECAUSE WE ARE BEST FRIENDS.

(I hope he sees this the next time he comes here to fulfill another of my blog design wish list items.)

I had to pee immediately upon arriving and am happy to report that the bathrooms still appear to be the same as they were when I first started coming here in the 80s with the Girl Scouts.

A tour was leaving just as I was buying our tickets so we made it JUST IN TIME. Our guide was a young man named DANIEL and he was absolutely precious. ACTUALLY, THIS IS HIM:

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I LAUGHED HEARTILY AT ALL OF HIS DAD JOKES. Chooch did not.

Our group wasn’t very big, being a weekday afternoon. Just us and maybe 3 other families plus an older couple.

Somehow the tour always feels never-the-same to me. But this time it was even more different because the guided tour was drastically truncated and then an optional self-guided tour was available at the end. I asked the lady at the ticket counter if this was a new thing and she goes, “Oh! No, not really,” in a tone that made me feel like A FOOL for asking. But then she said, “We started doing it about two years ago after the pandemic.”

OK WELL THAT’S KIND OF RECENT THOUGH??

I can’t imagine back in the day, or in this day even, being like, “Oh cool a hole in the earth, let’s slip inside and see what’s up.”

The guided portion with DANIEL was over in a blink, and of course we opted for the self-guided portion afterward, which was billed as an additional 45-60 MINUTES and came with all kinds of caveats about STEEP GRADES and MYRIAD STEPS or whatever, but I feel like it only took us about 20 minutes to get through it?!

I was going to try and convince you that Chooch was in the middle of a cave-dweller conjuring here but I think he was actually just catching water drops on his hand.

I didn’t realize until later that night at home that what I assumed was a brochure we were handed with our tickets was actually a map for the self-guided tour which would have explained things we were looking at. Oh well.

We did see Calico Falls though! Because there was a sign with an arrow, so…

SPARKLY.

And then we had to climb up a shit ton of steps that even had me a little winded by the end and I am in pretty good step-climbing shape. JUST SO YOU KNOW.

We couldn’t leave without perusing the gift shop and then filling out the COMMENT CARD, but first we:

1. needed a pen;
2. needed confirmation of our guide’s name

Chooch handled both of these because I’m convinced that saying, “Excuse me?” in a fake polite voice is his most favorite past time. The lady who gave us our tickets handled these requests and probably thought we were so needy. I couldn’t really get a good feel for her but I thought perhaps she was annoyed by us.

Then we went outside to the deck because that is a must-do at Laurel Caverns!

Chooch was like, “Seriously!? You don’t have to pay for these in Korea!” Yeah, because Korea is King. Korea wants people to see beautiful nature for free.

Fun fact, I won a Cultural Arts medal in elementary school by submitting a photograph I took from this summit. WOW, I AM SO COOL I KNOW.

Fun fact #2, I have a Cultural Arts medal hanging in my kitchen BUT IT’S FROM A LATER YEAR, FOR A DIFFERENT VISUAL ARTS SUBMISSION. All I did was win back then, she said as she effortlessly cracks her knuckles.

Before leaving, we stopped to mourn the area where the mini golf course used to be. It’s now something called THE GROTTOES and all we knew was that it was something for kids. Chooch was like, “No, I can’t leave until I know exactly what this is” so he went back to the gift shop counter where several of the ladies were congregated and hit them with another, “Excuse me?”

One of the women explained that it’s a scavenger hunt “for children.” And we were like, ‘Oh, OK” and we must have come across as crestfallen because the lady who I wasn’t sure hated us or not cut in to say, “I’ll sell you one ticket and you both can go in, if you want.”

Chooch and I looked at each other and immediately said, “OK!” We both identify as children, after all.

And then she even discounted that one ticket on top of it!! Suddenly this lady loved us for some reason. I mean, we ARE pretty adorable. Then as she was getting the clipboard with the scavenger items (animals that we would find painted on the walls) and lanterns, she explained to us that the owner had built the largest man-made caverns in the country to house the mini golf course. It’s made from cement, but actual stalactites had begun to form but over the years, people kept damaging it and the owner got pissed and shut it down in 2019 – so, two years after we were last there. And now it’s reopened as this adorable activity for little kids!

(And me and Chooch!)

There were 10 or 12 animals on the list, and as the lady opened the door for us, she goes, “I think the bat is the hardest to find –  I can give you a hint if you want” but we yelled NO because we are so competitive and needed to do this with no help.

To say that we took this extremely seriously, the outcome of which we would carry with us for the rest of our lives, was an understatement. We took to that darkened, man-made ex-mini golf cave by storm, holding our lanterns to the ceiling like we were announcing the arrival of the Red Coats, diligently checking off animal after animal, even writing in some that weren’t on the list (“They must be trying to trick us,” Chooch scoffed. As if.)

But then, we had made it all the way to the exit and one animal remained. “How did we miss this!?” Chooch cried. “We have to go back and look again, I need 100% completion.”

So, we began to backtrack. By this point, one lone family had also entered the Grottoes – a couple with their young son (maybe 5?) and a younger baby carried on the dad’s back in some baby hiking apparatus. They were also on the tour with us and were very mild, so I was not mad about their arrival. Chooch ran up ahead and yelled across the Grottoes to them (there were some parts that were more open and less maze-like than others so you could see other areas where you had already been), “Have you seen a monkey yet?”

They checked their paper and then the mom called back, “No, no monkey yet!” and then the little kid started repeating, “Monkey? Monkey?”

“Wait — we’re looking for a monkey? Why did I think we were looking for a dog??” I asked Chooch, who probably said, “Because you’re stupid” or something equally as disparaging because this is how I taught him to show love.

Anyway, now we had this family fixated on the monkey and we ALL ended up retracing our steps all the way back to the beginning (oh, we did find the bat btw and it was sort of tricky but we wouldn’t have needed a clue!!) until finally we conceded that the monkey just didn’t exist.

“Maybe they put that on here on purpose so if people came out with it checked, Laurel Caverns will know they’re lying,” Chooch said an approximation of this (now that he’s been working on fixing my blog, he has been criticizing my blog posts and accusing me of PUTTING WORDS IN PEOPLES MOUTHS, etc etc and I am like OK, CREATIVE LICENSE and also I’m sorry that I don’t walk around with a voice recorder to assure 100% accuracy BUT I CAN CERTAINING START DOING SO, CHOOCH).

We left the Grottoes and the ladies were like DID YOU HAVE FUN? DID YOU FIND EVERYTHING? and we were like YES BUT WHERE IS THE MONKEY?? and the lady who sold us the ticket was like “It should be there?” and the other lady was like, at the same time, “Oh, she* has been repainting all the animals and hasn’t gotten to the monkey yet – it’s painted over.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

*I dunno who SHE is but maybe SHE could have crossed MONKEY off the list for the time being?!

So, we spent literally an hour in these darkened recesses looking for something that didn’t exist. But did we have fun? Fuck yes.

But then, the lady who sold us the ticket and apparently loved us was like, “COME ON I’LL SHOW YOU WHERE THE MONKEY SHOULD BE AND YOU CAN SHOW ME THE EXTRA ANIMALS TOO BECAUSE I HAVEN’T SEEN THOSE YET!” so we had to walk through A THIRD TIME which is so fucking hilarious to me and kind of what Chooch deserved since he was being so whiny about the mini golf course not being there anymore. That was A LOT of quality time at the mini golf gravesite.

Anyway, she showed us the little nook where the monkey will eventually be resurrected and Chooch was so pissed. “I KNEW something should have been in this room!” he cried. Then we had to walk around trying to find all the little mice and snakes to show her and she was actually so giddy about discovering these new little paintings, so it was kind of cute.

After we said goodbye to our gift shop friends, we ran into the Grottoes family over by the restrooms and I told them that the monkey has been painted over. The dad was, “I KNEW IT!!” and then we accidentally walked out to the parking lot with them while they were talking about where they were going to get lunch and I never heard what they decided on, so I was nervous that we were going to end up at the same place because these are the neurotic social worries I have.

Chooch made me get out of the car and take this picture. He is obsessed with Kirby, as you will note by his Kirby hoodie that he brought after I yelled at him to bring a hoodie because it would be FREEZING IN THE CAVERN.

We ended up stopping at ROY’S PUB in Uniontown for lunch. Funny how when Henry the Antagonizer isn’t with us, we manage to find somewhere to eat almost instantly with no fights. Hmmm. Could Henry be what you might call THE CATALYST?

It’s was FRED’S birthday and I will tell you how we know this: one of the servers went out to the parking lot and the came hoofing it back in, wheezing, “FRED’S HERE!” And then when this old man entered, everyone was like “FRED!” and I was afraid they were also going to break out into “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” which I have never actually in real life but feel like I would melt from secondhand embarrassment if so, but that did not happen. Instead, they directed him to sit at the bar stool with the Birthday….Banner? Cape? slung over the back, and then later they brought a cupcake out of the kitchen and serenaded him.

That part was ok, though. I felt like we should have sung along too but instead we just there, full-mastication mode, being creepy City Folk Voyeurs to this quaint villager celebration.

We contemplated getting an appetizer called the WAGON WHEEL but after the server described it as a Mexican thing having a “pork rind texture,”  I was convinced it was meat-tainted even though Chooch kept saying, “She just said pork rind TEXTURE and that’s made with WHEAT” and then he tried googling it but only dessert-things were coming up.

The grilled cheese was good but made with miniature bread. The fries were also good. Our lunch came to $18 and it was the cheapest lunch we’ve had in a very long time, which is sad. #EconomyThings

Roy’s hot water isn’t just regular hot, it’s very hot. That’s Roy’s for you.

Anyway, what a nice and memorable day spent with my kid who almost treats me like a real person now! 18 is a cool age.

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