I recently completed visits to all the caving parks by electric vehicle. To be clear, with caves running under all 50 states and over 100 parks having some type of named cave, this only lists parks where the primary activity is to visit a cave, almost always on a guided tour.

Subconsciously I become a bit claustrophobic in subterranean spaces, so I compensate by imagining what type of monsters best suit the scene. Rangers who do cave tours are quick to get this humor, although it’s best not to spook other troglocenes—cave visitors—in case anyone is seriously fearful. Below, I describe both the scientific cave category and my own cave creature category.

Talus caves are formed when boulders stack up in narrow passages, and Pinnacles in California is the unit to explore these. The large boulders and varying heights made me feel like a dwarf, my first category.

“Caves, they say! Caves! Holes to fly in time of war, to store fodder in!
My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns of Helm’s Deep are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be. Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!”

— Gimli

California’s Lava Beds is the best place to explore different types of lava tube caves, and the skulls and ice-cold rooms are ghostly. Craters of the Moon in Idaho has a similar cave, but obviously that’s more werewolf. El Malpais is more for self-guided, serious spelunkers, but many natural entrances can be seen. Definitely bats.

My favorite cave park is Timpanagos in Utah, due to the good condition and variety of speleothems (features created by water). The alien features evoke melon heads. Solution caves, created when liquids dissolve bedrock, are the most common types of cave parks. Carlsbad in New Mexico is the largest with grand speleothems that tower overhead (see photo). Try not to listen for goblin drums coming from the deep. Mammoth in Kentucky is the longest in the world with tunnels fit for lizard people. South Dakota’s Jewel and Wind caves rank 3 & 7 in the world for length, each with different speleothems to see. Also, think Djinn and Minotaur, respectively. Oregon completed my solution cave set, and it’s a good example of a marble cave. Definitely a troll cave.

That’s my complete list of caving parks. Great Basin is not primarily a caving park despite dragonesque Lehman Caves, because the park has such wonderful above-ground scenic views and alpine hiking. Neither is the vampiresque Karst-cave Ozark, since paddling is primary. Nor is archaeological Russell in Alabama. Before going zero carbon, we visited lava tubes in Hawaii, but there’s flowing lava to see. The parks have many more mines, ice, sea or littoral caves, but not primarily for caving.

And always remember to wear completely different clothes and shoes when visiting different caves, so you can help prevent the spread of the lethal white nose syndrome among different populations of bats! I never imagined I’d use all those Chuck Taylors I bought during their bankruptcy underground; perfect in case I need to run from a basilisk.