Trip to a secret cave

I was looking up stuff to do on our end of summer trip to Hot Springs and ran across a video on YouTube posted by the Hot Springs Broadcast Network.  The video showed the way to a hidden cave in one of the park areas in Hot Springs.  I had seen the park on a previous trip, but we had not explored it.  The video was in two parts and only showed how to get to the trail in part one, and arriving at the cave in part 2.  We had done a little cave exploring in a previous trip to Arkansas.  We went to Blanchard Springs Caves and loved it!  We were there on Christmas Eve that visit and we were the only ones on the tour.  The tour guide was great and because it was just us, he took extra time and showed us some stuff that they don't always show you on the regular tour.  We also did a little hiking then and explored some small caves and cliffs near where we were staying.  So, after that trip we were excited to find a "secret" cave on this trip.  The trail was easy to find after watching the video.

After going through the bushes a little ways, the trail starts going up.  The video said it gets a little steep... I soon figured out why there was no video of them going up the trail.  It would have been very hard to climb the trail holding a camera.  The trail pretty much goes straight up.  The picture above is not the actual trail we were on, it was an offshoot, but it shows how steep the trails were.  The trail to the cave was made harder to climb because there was a ton of loose rock, which made it hard to get a solid footing.  I had to use the random small trees to help pull myself up a lot of the trail.  I realized how out of shape I was when going up, and really didn't know if I was going to make it to the top.  But, I do know that determination and prayer can get you through (and up).  I made it to the top and was extremely relieved to find the cave, which was very cool inside.  It was a hundred degrees that day, so it was nice to have a cool place to rest and catch my breath. 

These are pictures of the kids going into the entrance to the cave.

I really do recommend if you are up that way and have never been to this particular cave (and do not have very small children, elderly, handicapped, or very out of shape people with you) to go and check it out.  It was a really neat cave and though we were not fortunate enough to go when there were bats in it (there were in the video), it was still worth the climb.  I can say, the trip back down was much faster and much easier!