Welcome to Minnetonka Cave, my name is Jared, I'm one of the Tour Guides up here.
I'm going to tell you a little about some of the things that go on inside so if you're
interested in visiting the cave you can know what to expect when you get here.
Some rules that we ask you to obey before you go in the cave,
is that we ask that you bring no food or drink inside the cave,
we're trying to protect the natural beauty of the cave, keep the garbage out.
We also ask you not to touch the cave.
This is known as a living cave, the rocks are still growing and developing.
And if you touch them you can actually harm the rocks.
We'll point out the damage you can do by touching our formations.
If you are bringing camera equipment, we ask you not to bring tripods in the cave.
It's just kind of small in places to pass other tours, it's inconvenient.
So if you want to bring your cameras, please do.
We encourage you to take pictures, there's some beautiful spots in the cave.
As you can see, there are mosquitos out here, that are buzzing around, so you might want
to bring some mosquito repellant.
A couple of other things to keep in mind if you are visiting our cave for the first time.
It is fourty degrees inside the cave, and you are in the cave for about an hour to an
hour and a half depending on the tour.
So it is recommended that you bring a jacket.
As you are walking on some rough rocky walk ways,
And it is wet in places inside the cave, so you are going to want some good shoes on and
a jacket is what we recommend.
So you are going to go over a total of 888 stairs inside the cave.
So we ask that you be in physical condition enough to be able to climb those stairs.
It is first come first serve, we don't take a lot of reservations,
we do allow if you are coming in a larger group, like a youth camp,
a scout camp, or a family reunion, we do allow reservations if you call ahead.
A couple other things with that in mind, we don't have a phone line up here at the cave.
We're in the middle of the forest.
So if you're calling the day of, we aren't going to be able to accomodate a reservation
because we are already up here.
So it is first come first serve, and on busy days in July, especially around the holidays,
we get a lot of visitors up here, we could have four to five hundred people
through the cave in a day.
You may have to wait.
You may have a two to three hour wait.
So it is highly recommended, especially if you have a large group,
and you don't have a reservation, send one person up in advance to purchase the tickets,
they can purchase them for any time during the day.
Then go back down, bring the rest of your group up later at your reserved time.
Because once you purchase the ticket, that's your ticket for the day.
But we can only accomodate groups of about 30 people per tour.
Tours every half an hour just for safety sake inside the cave.
One other thing to keep in mind because we are out here in the middle of the forest,
we can't accept credit or debit cards.
Cash or checks only.
We just don't have the ability to process them up here.
The other thing to keep in mind if you are going to come and visit our cave, is we're
trying to protect our bats.
Bats are an important natural resource they take care of the flying insects for us, especially
the mosquitos that have been biting me.
So we try to protect our bats.
And there is a bat fungus that's spreading and we're tyring to keep it from here, it's
called white nose syndrome.
It's a fungus that grows on the bats, it causes them to wake up during their hybernation.
It irritates their skin, they can wake up more during hybernation.
So they can starve to death if we spread that fungus to our cave.
So to protect our bats, if you've been in a cave or a mine on the east side of the United
States or in Canada, or a cave or mine in Europe,
we ask that you don't wear any of the same clothing including jewelry.
Don't bring your wedding rings and watches that you had in those caves.
Because they could potentially be spreading that fungus to our cave and then obviously
harm our bats.
And even if that cave if five or ten or fifteen or twenty years ago,
there is the potential that those spores could still be alive.
So we ask you to not bring any of the clothing, backpacks, jewelry, cameras,
that you had in those caves into our cave.
And while we're talking about bats, we have several different species of bats in the cave.
You probably aren't going to see them on tours because they're hiding out in the cracks and
crevices.
And during the summer time when we are giving tours, not a lot of bats actually live in
the cave, this is just a place where they like to hybernate.
Going through the cave, it is exercise.
I mean 888 stairs by the time you go in and out of the cave.
But it's fun and it's definitely worth that climb.
Because you're going to see some things that you're not going to see any where else.
The drapery's the flowstone are just beautiful formations and that's one of the reasons why
I love Minnetonka cave.
Each tour guide does things a little bit differently, we like to have some fun, point out the scientific
things in the cave.
We sure hope if you come up and see our cave that you enjoy your tour.