Entrance to Indian Echo Caverns
There’s nothing like a friend visiting from out of town to remind you of what’s in your own backyard.
Indian Echo Caverns is in Hummelstown, PA which is about 30 minutes from my home, and in the 10 years I have lived in Lancaster, I had yet to visit. Having visited Penn’s Cave as a kid and watched The Descent, I thought I filled my quota om caves, but when my friend suggested it, I thought, why not?
So we headed out on Saturday morning, sunny and still snow-covered, and booked the first tour of the day at 10:30am. Our tour group was only four people not including the guide, which seemed like the perfect size to me. In the spring and summer seasons, their tours can swell to include up to 28 people.
We hung out in their large gift shop waiting for the tour to start, browsing racks of dream-catcher earrings, gemstones, and pocket knives personalized with names. The tour begins about 71 steps above the entrance to cavern with warnings and pleas not touch the rock formations because the oil in our fingers prevents new formations from growing.
We climb down the stairs covered in salt and the cold morning air is still; the Swatara creek and snow glittering in the bright sunlight. We are told that the cave stays at a constant 52 degrees, year round. While 52 degrees would undoubtedly send me running back to my car in search of a sweatshirt in the summer, it feels positively balmy in the winter.
Standing in the “entrance room”, our tour guide begins his spiel which is informative and lively (can you say stalagmite), but peppered with jokes and observations that were so family-friendly and corny that I couldn’t help but picture Truman (played by Jim Carrey) telling the same jokes in The Truman Show, if Truman was giving tours of caves, of course.
For example, “You’ll have to use your imagination for this one, If you look at the rock formation above you, it looks like the New York City skyline– upside down! [Long pause] I said you had to use your imagination!”
"Good afternoon, good evening, and good night!", my friend.
The cave is dark (obviously) but outfitted with electric lights that the guide turns on and off in different parts of the caverns during the tour, the effect being that the guide has the chance to give you a “Wow” moment. My “Wow” moment on the tour was standing in the Indian Ballroom in the dark when the guide hit the lights and I was suddenly staring up forty feet above me at a wall of stalactite, stalagmite and column formations. The beauty and the grandeur of the formations is stunning as was the realization that it is naturally hidden from the world, in the complete dark most of the time.
The tour continues to different “rooms” like the Blue Room and the Wedding Chapel– each impressive and visually complex in their own right. They are linked by a series of narrow, wet passages which met my personal cave authenticity requirements. If it’s not a little dirty, a little wet, and a little claustrophobic then you probably shouldn’t call it a cave. The rocks that the most tourists have banged their heads off are helpfully indicated by red lights or pointed out by the guides with such names such as “Headache Rock”.
After the tour was complete, we emerged from the cave into the bright winter morning, blinking and squinting as our eyes adjusted and then started our climb back up the parking lot. I mentally checked off Indian Echo Caverns from my long list of places to see, subcategory: In my backyard.
