Our New Year’s resolution around here is to explore more of Oregon (aka The Husband has decided we aren’t adventurous enough [to which I say, “what?! Just last week we had that nail-biter moment where the Internet wasn’t quite fast enough to run Call of Duty AND Netflix AND Minecraft so I had to resort to a real paperback book – it almost did us in!]). And so this last weekend, we went to Ape Cave.

I was promised a “moderate hike.” I got this:

WE WENT UNDERGROUND AND IT WAS VERY SCARY (BUT DON’T TELL MY KIDS I SAID THAT CUZ THEY LOVED IT).

Here we are heading off to Ape Cave (at this point, I still thought it would be like one of those guided cave tours sans guide and BYOHeadlamps because this is ‘MURICA and they’d never let you do something THAT dangerous because litigation, right?):

The kids pooh-poohed Lower Cave (“the easy exploration of a spacious lava tube”) and decided to head straight into Upper Cave (“more difficult travel through a smaller, longer, and more rugged lava tube to an exit [after which you] enjoy an easy return hike winding through shady forest and crusty lava formations”). No worries, right? I’m a big hiker, it’ll be all good.

Oh, is that scrambling over large boulder piles of various levels of stability? Dodging subterranean waterfalls? Scaling 8-foot rock faces? Why yes, YES IT IS!

The kids rocked it (heh). They took turns leading the way (shockingly, we were the only ones down there aside from a couple we met halfway [who were on what looked like the worst first date ever]).

ARGH!

About 3/4 of the way through, there’s this awful tease of daylight where I forced an obligatory family selfie (if I’m going to face my subterranean fears, Imma get a picture of it).

I almost cried heading back into the depths after seeing that peek of light, but finally, FINALLY we made it to the exit. Oh what’s that? A rickety ladder leading through a teeny skylight to freedom? Why would I expect anything less?

(Can I just say here that daylight is highly underrated?)

Happily three-quarters of us LOVED the adventure and the less-enthusiastic quarter took the advice she always gives to her children (“the only way to end this is to get through it and it doesn’t help to complain, so might as well just keep going”) and so we returned to the car and our well-earned sandwiches with no injuries, happy hearts, and a plaintive request for the next adventure to involve fewer caves and more breweries.