The Cave of Cakes

While visiting Great Basin, I did the ranger-led tour of Lehman Caves, which are "highly decorated," cave talk for every inch being covered with stalactites, stalagmites, parachutes and shields. Shields are a very rare formation, known to be in only 68 of the more than 40,000 caves in the U.S. They look like two cymbals stuck together and grow out of cracks through which water seeps. They can be tiny or giant, and grow at all angles, sometimes coming straight out of the floor.

While I’ve been in decorated caves before, this one just blew me away with the sheer number and variation of formations, including this spiky stalactite.

It looked to me like the spine of some alien... In fact, a lot of what we saw looked like something designed by Geiger.

The cave also made me hungry. Specifically, it filled me with a hunger to do a wedding cake for a spelunking couple, in the shape of one of the formations such as those below:

When I get back to school, one of the first classes I’ll be taking is special occasion cakes, which includes a project designing your own "theme" cake.

Helllloooo, Cave Cake.