Penn's Cave & Wildlife Park (7/25/2022)

Monday, July 25, 2022

On our way home from Buffalo, we stopped at Penn's Cave & Wildlife Park near Centre Hall, PA.

Penn Cave House (1885 as a hotel, now corporate offices)

Patriotic Arch

The Visitor Center/Gift Shop had a train
running at ceiling level

Bags of "mining rough" were available for sale,
each augmented with gemstones

Prospector Pete's Gemstone Panning sluice

Here you would sift through your bag of mining rough
to pan out your gemstones

Another feature of Penn's Cave was the Miners Maze,
with four stations to find the letters spelling 'gold,'
and if completed in a certain time, one wins a prize

We began with the 90-minute Farm-Nature-Wildlife Tour

By strictly calling these animals Bison bison/Bison,
our guide mightily confused some tour participants
who then thought they were related to "buffalo"

A good portion of the Penn's Cave property is
Penn's Cave Farm, for growing crops for the animals

Some of the tree trunk animal carvings: groundhogs

There were Cervus canadensis/Elk with calves,
as well as Odocoileus virginianus/White-tailed Deer with fawns

One of a herd of Bos taurus taurus/Longhorn Cattle (KSS)

A variation of the Vulpes vulpes/Red Fox is
known to be a red fox because the tip of
the tail is white (on a Urocyon cinereoargenteus/
Gray Fox, the tip of the tail is black) (KSS)

Tom, the Lynx rufus/Bobcat

Guide Lily with Oscar, the Ursus americanus/Black Bear

Penn's Cave also has its own [unmanned] airport

Gift shop display of vintage souvenirs

This is quite a souvenir!

Now to take the 48 steps down to the
Penn's Cave Boat Tour

Flat-bottomed boats with electric motors seat about 20 people

Penn's Cave history correctly credits the indigenous Seneca tribe with discovering the cave. A Reverend James Martin was the first white man to enter the cave in 1795.

The Cathedral was one of the few
areas to be lighted, otherwise a spotlight
was used to point out formations

Can you see the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek?

The Garden of the Gods is seen in silhouette

A huge boulder of limestone that dropped from the ceiling
is called the Rock of Gibraltar and created a Strait of Gibraltar

The Owl formation

The white formations are Jabba the Hut and the Nittany Lion;
the original cave entrance is beyond the Nittany Lion

The legend of Penn's Cave is told, where a French explorer, Malachi Boyer, befriended the Seneca Chief O-Ko-Cho. Malachi fell in love with the chief's beautiful daughter, Nita-nee. They were forbidden to marry, so they ran away together. However, they were caught, and Malachi was thrown into the cave filled with water. The only exit was guarded by the Senecas and so Malachi died. Later when Nita-nee died, the spirits arose and covered her grave, creating Mount Nittany. It is from this mountain that the Nittany Lion was named, and became the mascot of nearby Pennsylvania State University.

The Chimes that between 1885 and 1967
were tapped with a wooden mallet to
produce a melody of hollow sounds

The practice of "playing" the Chimes was stopped because of damage to the formation.

Room of Colored Lights in red

The Room of Colored Lights in rainbow colors

In 1927, a tunnel was cut at the closed end
of the cavern; we floated from the 52 degrees
inside the cave to the 84 degrees outside

The boat tours were scheduled every 15 minutes,
so we passed three boats during our 60-minute tour

After a brief sail on Lake Nitanee, we
returned to go back through Penn's Cave

Penn's Cave had a combination of clear rock faces
and stalactites and stalagmites, and flow formations (KSS)

The boat guide offered the phrase “stalactites hold tight to the ceiling and stalagmites might touch the ceiling,” to help remember the difference between the two formations. However, I always remembered that stalactites has a 'c' for ceiling, and stalagmites has a 'g' for ground.

Dove's Wings formation

Umm, the Statue of Liberty

Elephant with Runny Nose; all the stalactites
dripped water, but our guide told us if we
thought the elephant's nose dripped water -
it's not (say the last phrase fast), LOL