by Cindy

Do you like to go exploring? When I was a girl, we lived right by a creek that meandered many miles in the south side of Indianapolis. My sister and I explored every inch of Lick Creek in our large subdivision. There were parts that we had “jumping over” contests. Sometimes we landed IN the creek, but we didn’t care. There were small fish in the creek, and water striders floated on top. At first we thought they were SPIDERS, but luckily they weren’t and they never bothered us. My sister liked to capture crawdads (crayfish) and keep them as pets at home, but she always returned them to the creek. We took lots of hikes and had many picnics along the creek. We even made friends with other kids we met during our hikes! But one of our favorite parts of the creek was right by our own house, under our own street. The creek ran through some HUGE pipes under the road, and it was very shallow there. Sometimes this part dried up in summer and we could play in there for hours, pretending it was our cave. Boy, those were good times!

Have you ever visited a REAL cave? Over spring break my granddaughters visited Marengo Cave in southern Indiana, Mammoth Cave in central Kentucky, and Ruby Falls in Tennessee. They saw some amazing sites!