Dunning's Spring Park & Ice Cave
Over the summer we decided to take the kids and cousins to dunning's spring Park and ice cave. It is a nice Park with lots of areas to explore, and a surprising amount of traffic for a small town.
The ice cave is supposed to trap enough cold air throughout the winters that it forms eight to 10 inches of ice on the walls of the cave through early May and June as the melting runoff enters into the cave and hits the cold Rock and the cold air down below. It typically lasts until about August depending on the weather. It's a pretty cool phenomenon and a lot of people from around the area come to check it out.
Dunning's Spring Park
To start off but take a look at the dunning's spring Park portion of the Park and trail system.
Dunham's spring is a really nice spring that runs through the park and into the river. It's hard to tell how much water is normally running through the spring given the fact that the night before there was extreme high winds, a tornado, and torrential rain that hit the town.
As we drove in we saw the whole town working together to remove down trees and other damned buildings helping each other out.
Head of the Springs
I'm not sure where the springs is really located, or if you're able to venture back further into the mouth of the springs. It's all roped off, and you can only get there by walking path and a viewing platform. Not to mention the speed of the water rushing makes it seem like a really bad idea to go back into the rocks. But it was pretty cool to see the water just rushing out the side of the bluff that way.
Rushing Falls
As the spring continues down to bluff it takes a nice sharp turn and turns into a rushing waterfall. No I'm not sure if this rushing waterfall is always like this, or if it was this impressive due to all the rain the night before. It might be really nice most of the time to where you can playing a crick and the waterfall area, but not the day we visited. As you can see in the pictures, the spring is brushing at maximum speed, it is at its upper limits of the banks. There was evidence as we continue throughout the area exploring that the spring had flooded the previous night and was well over it to normal banks.
Stone Bridge
There was this beautiful stone bridge built over the spring waters. It looked like they used all natural and local Stone but I wasn't sure. Seeing a bridge like this makes me think back in time and all the black and white photos I see. This is a bridge that was looks like it was built in the 20s or 30s, then you could have seen the picture of your grandparents on it on an old buddy vacation photo album.
Built In Benches
Just over the bridge is a really cool built-in bench. Again it's clearly built to last, and I'm sure a lot of people have sat down here. It's a nice cool place to sit in the shade and you feel the missed and a cool breeze from the creek as it goes by. It's quite enjoyable, and again it's built all the same Stone. It's one of my favorite things when hiking trails is to see something built into nature, out of nature that looks like it could be there for a long time.
Spring was flooding due to all the rain
Just a quick shot of the flood waters. You can tell the cricket is still way higher than normal. The place is that the kids would normally be playing in without socks and shoes is no underwater, that tree clearly doesn't belong in the middle of the creek. There's a lot of other places we could have taken photos where you could see the grass and the bushes that were flattened due to the water the night before.
Ice Cave
Cave History
Cave Entrance
The ice cave is actually very small. We managed to get our group of nine in, but it was crowded and we all had to kind of shuffle back and forth to get down to the lowest point to see the frost. There was another group in the cave when we first got there, but we had to wait for them to come out before we could come in. It is not a large cave, at least the parts we can get to. It looks like you're used to be more cave system down below, but there appears to be rocks that have fallen and have sealed off enough area to where people can no longer climb down, unless you're one of those crazy spelunking people who go through tiny holes I think I scraped all over. That's not me
Ice / Frost in the cave
I think because of the rain the night before and what we saw as a new hole in his healing, almost all the ice was gone. I'm not sure if it was recent due to the storm, but it looked like we could see daylight and with that new Hall I think the air was able to enter the cave and melt most of the ice or there was enough rain runoff that came into the cave that melted most of the ice. I did manage to find some ice crystals in the bottom side of a rock close to where the air flow from the lower cave that was blocked off came up but that was it. There was not inches of ice left. Might have to go back sometime earlier in the spring to see if the whole wall was covered.
I think it was a pretty cool Park and ice cave. I would definitely go back earlier spring to see if there was 8 to 10 inches of ice on the wall that there are most years. In fact I would go back and spend a better part of a day there. I think you could make a really nice picnic spot, play in the spring, OR find something in town to do with the river that goes through town. If the river wasn't it flood stage that day, it might have been fun to see if you could rent kayaks or canoes and go up and down the river a little bit. I'd highly recommend checking it out
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