Shasta Caverns

This morning the breakfast situation is not as fun since we have a

 waitress that screws up all the orders and then a manager that can’t find the hotel ticket that went with our meal, so wants us to pay for Oscar’s meal.  We explain how he was on yesterday’s and tomorrow’s tickets and he says that he will call the hotel to confirm.  We call Shasta Caverns to find out if we need tickets in advance of the 10 am tour and find out that if we don’t make there for the 10am tour, we won’t be able to go until noon because there is a school 

group that is at 11am.  So, John hightails it up I-5 in a super hurry and then we are slowed down by the 1.5 mile drive off the highway to the cavern entrance which is the hilliest, most twisted road we’ve been on so far this trip.  I jump out and buy the tickets and we hit the bathrooms, run down to the dock to catch the boat across Shasta Lake.  Now, Oscar was super excited about this trip because I told him that we would be taking a boat and a bus and we are, but the main thing is a one hour tour of a cavern with all the stalagmites and stalactites etc that

go with seeing a cavern.  He liked the idea of a cave, but would have rather spent the next hour on the bus and the boat.  We had to go up and down stairs, not touch the rock and be quiet so that other people in the tour could hear

 our tour guide.  This did not sit well with him.  About halfway through, I decided that this was the dumbest idea I have ever had for an activity with a toddler.  But he eventually understood that we had to stay with the group, that he had to be quiet and went up and down a ton of stairs like a trooper.  He didn’t want to be carried and made 90% of the tour on his own. 

 The only thing that kept him going was the fact that the bus and the boat would be waiting for us at the end of the tour.  He had 0 interest in the cavern.  And after Ruby Falls and Carlsbad, they’re not all that.  John kept asking if I 

wanted to hear what was going on and look around more and him take care of Oscar, but I’ve seen all the little things that water dripping through limestone can do before and found that I might have reached a saturation point here.  I started looking forward to the bus and boat ride too because this entire cavern system appeared to be vertical upon itself.  We went up and down more stairs than climbing the leaning tower of Pisa twice and there’s no vista point in a cavern.