Spelunking in Doolin Cave

Well I hope everyone had a happy Valentine’s! (Thank you, Riley & Derek for the best Valentine Tom and I have received in years.) And thank you to everyone who responded so positively to the last post! I didn’t expect that at all, and it was quite a delightful surprise! (Would I be pushing my luck if I included more of Tom and I on a regular basis? Probably.) So, what did we do for Valentine’s? Well, hold on to your hats because it just might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever heard. Vegan Japanese Take Away (Take Out, Take Home, whatever!), couch, and sweat pants. Oooh yeaaah. The funny thing was, we were dressed up, ready to go dine out when we just looked at each other and realized that as much fun as it is to go out for dinner, we really just wanted to be together with good food we didn’t have to make ourselves with our cats and a roaring fireplace. Sometimes I think it’s easy to become caught up in “what we’re supposed to be doing” and forget what it is that we want to be doing. To relate this to Ireland, we promised ourselves that we would do whatever we wanted, and that was all. If we didn’t want to go see the “must see” touristy thing, we wouldn’t. If we did, who cares if it’s touristy, we did it anyway. That is actually how we ended up seeing the biggest stalactite in the world that is open to the public. Quite by accident.

Notes: Please excuse the ridiculous face I am making in the first shot of me. I have no idea what I was doing with my arms.
Spelunking sounds like a dirty word.
I’ve included some photo info on the last shot so you can see roughly what it takes to shoot in zero to little light.
I thought it would be funny to take a video of my ascension up the stairs afterward- but it wasn’t. It was dark and really long and you think it’s never going to end and eventually I get out of breath near the top. Why did I think that would be cool?

   


   
   
   



Doolin Cave Co. Clare, Ireland. 50mm f/1.8 1/80 ISO 800

The tour was advertised as forty five minutes (it was probably half that) and it was expensive and touristy and there isn’t much to see other than the stalactite, but it is a wonder to behold in real life, despite that a lot of us are probably spoiled by programs such as Planet Earth when it comes to seeing wonders of the world. If you like that sort of thing and you’re in the area, why not. It was a spontaneous thing for us and we loved it. And, and, AND – upon exciting the back of the cave I saw a herd of wild horses. I wouldn’t have seen them had I not gone.