Jenolan Caves and a Rare Sighting

We all woke up on our second Blue Mountain with caves on the brain.  Jenolan Caves are known as Australia's finest, and we loved our visit to Yarrangobilly Caves during our first road trip in January.  Simply driving up to the entrance of the carpark is dramatic in itself, and looks like something you'd see at Disney World.

While our friends Kylie and Josh braved 1300 steps on the River cave tour, the four older kids joined a Junior Explorers class and Sam and I hung out with Kenyon on a self-guided tour.

Sam and I are both pretty sweet on Kenyon, and with three kids it's always a treat to spend some good, quality time with just one--especially since when he's not throwing a royal fit about some perceived injustice (which happens quite a bit), he's a ton of fun to be around.

Sam and I didn't listen to all that much of the audio tour, but Kenyon relished punching the correct number into the device and reciting bits and pieces back to us.  This resulted in our tour consisting of Kenyon's cartoon voice saying, "Limestone formations...water absorbs carbons dioxide...stalagmites".  I don't know if his voice will ever stop being that of a 2-year old, but at least he'll have a profitable future in voice-over work.

We went on a bushwalk afterwards, and walked beside a pond that gets its brilliant shade of blue from light being refracted through dissolved limestone particles.

Just then, I saw something in the water and told Sam that I had just seen a turtle...

...but then realized that it was an elusive creature that we had really been wanting to see in the wild--a platypus!

After platypus-watching, Kylie and Josh were crazy gracious enough to take all the kids back to the house so Sam and I could do one of Jenolan Cave's adventure tours--the Plughole.  We abseiled down a short 8 meters into the hole to start the tour, and then squeezed our way down and through the cave.   While the cave formations weren't spectacular, it was a ton of fun.

in our attractive caving jumpsuits after the abseil

Some spots were small enough that we had to lay on our side with our arm above our head and inch our way through--definitely not for anyone that borders on claustrophobic!

Thanks to Kylie and Josh for good company and planning the trip--we're hoping to get back to the Blue Mountains once springtime hits for some more camping and bushwalking.