post: add Moaning Caverns

Author: XerxesDGreat

_posts/2018-12-24-moaning-caverns.md

@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+---
+title: Moaning Caverns
+date: 2018-02-24
+category: Places
+tags:
+- travel
+- vacation
+media_subpath: /assets/img/posts/moaning-caverns/
+image:
+    path: preview.jpg
+    lqip: preview.lqip.jpg
+---
+
+I don't have many fears in life, but one of them is edges where heights are involved. I'm not really scared of _heights_ per se, but I definitely have a fear of being at the edge of a platform that's high up. Also, it's kinda specific; I'm fine if there's a rail or support, but if "don't fly out into the void" is put solely into my control, that just really gets to me.
+
+No, I'm not interested in dissecting why I'm scared when I have to prevent myself from falling to my doom, why do you ask?
+
+Any rate, we recently went to Angel's Camp on vacation and decided to go on a tour of one of the caves there: [Moaning Caverns](https://moaningcaverns.com/). I'd been on a cave tour with my mom years ago and they're really interesting; the rocks, the idea that someone came in here with candles, etc.
+
+So we went on this tour and were going through some corridors, all fine; sure it was a little close, but that's not one of my issues. But then we came across this:
+
+![Down the hole](down-the-hole.jpg){: lqip="down-the-hole.lqip.jpg" }
+
+Uh... I don't know if you know this, but a staircase is nothing but a bunch of edges without a railing in front. So, I saw this and while I didn't _immediately_ get scared, I definitely wasn't thrilled. I mean, it's a 100-foot (10 story) spiral staircase down in to... blackness. No, I couldn't see the bottom, which just means it's _really_ high.
+
+![People on the staircase](people-on-the-staircase.jpg){: lqip="people-on-the-staircase.lqip.jpg" }
+
+As the tour started going down, I hung back. I mean, I know I'm gonna go slow, so I shouldn't go first. Definitely wasn't because I was hoping they'd forget me up here and I could just wait for them to come back up.
+
+Alas my time to go into the darkness came. No, I don't have any photos of my descent since my hands were _firmly_ grasped to the cage and the central pole.. No, the fact that, if I fell, I wouldn't go far because of the cage and the pole in the middle didn't help _at all_. I was heart-in-throat terrified the entire way down, and my shaky legs were _not_ fun to deal with as slow as I was going. My wife and daughter, who weren't scared, tried to not be overly amused at my predicament and, for the most part, succeeded.
+
+Eventually, after approx 100 years, I reached the bottom. It only took about 10 min for me to calm down back to some semblance of normal; of course, my calming was not sped up by the fact that they mentioned the steel to build the staircase had been repurposed from World War I battleships... Any rate, eventually I could look up at the staircase and think "oh, that's not that bad, why was I so scared?"
+
+![Looking up](looking-up.jpg){: lqip="looking-up.lqip.jpg" }
+
+And really, the rock formations were kinda worth it; it looked amazing down there
+
+![Formation](formation.jpg){: lqip="formation.lqip.jpg" }
+
+![Angel veil with the staircase](tears-with-staircase.jpg){: lqip="tears-with-staircase.lqip.jpg" }
+
+After looking around for a while and after they turned out the light to show how dark it was (spoiler: it was dark), we went back up. Now, because irrational fears are just that - irrational - I had zero problems going back up. Yes, I was just as likely to fall to my death going up as going down (read: not likely), but my lizard brain wants none of them facts and figures.
+
+In all, it was a memorable experience where I faced my fears to spend time with my family and came out on the other side still not dead.
+
+![Family](the-fam.jpg){: lqip="the-fam.lqip.jpg" }