Höllenschlund - Geocaching

What an awesome place!!!! Roughly translated it is called "hell´s gorge"..
Millions (about 21 I think) of years ago, a volcano was formed here... a couple of hundred years ago they started getting the basalt for building purposes.. and this crater was left. You have to walk through a short tunnel and the entrance has a warning sign that you need to wear a helmet (oops, forgot those) to enter. The kids called walking through there "spookable" - a new word creation. It is indeed quite gloomy! But the reward is just on the other side (and you DO see the light at the end of the tunnel at all times :-D) - an awesome view of this impressive place!

Of course, we were here to find a geocache and it took us forever - all those rocks just look the same! lol

Juju and Isa got some bruises because they insisted on climbing around in the rocks but they had such a great time discovering flowers growing out of rocks, small lizards in cracks, a little mouse that we disturbed when we lifted a rock in search of the cache. We almost gave up on our hunt but then enlightenment struck and we found it at last!
Unfortunately after logging and getting out a travel bug, we just had enough time to put it back in it´s hide out before Muggles came around - good thing these crater walls have great acoustics so we heard them a minute before they saw us!

On this wall pretty much in the middle of the crater you can still see the volcanic structure.. I would have loved to climb up here but then I bet I would have had some monkey trying the same.. lol

The little chapel was once on top of the extinct volcano but had to be moved for the strip mining. Until just a few years back the local farmers had a yearly procession to St. Arnulphus, the saint to which this chapel is dedicated, so that he´d protect the pets and farmanimals.
Although I thought the little ones would be exhausted after all the climbing - the playground at the end of the hike was really cool and a we played for about an hour (until it started to rain heavier again). Oh yeah, we had breaks in the rain on this day - wohoo! Still, the basalt is quite slippery when wet and Juju still has some bruises from that day.