Gary Lloyd
Have you ever been among the first guests to arrive at Majestic Caverns in Childersburg?
The historic and amusement site, formerly known as DeSoto Caverns, is more than just a literal hole in the ground. My son and I recently drove to spend the day there, and arriving as one of the first vehicles to pull into the Highway 76 parking lot made me feel like Clark Griswold arriving at Walley World in “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” sans the anger that he took out on an innocent talking moose.
Every attraction was up and running already. Hardly a tourist was there. We had the Destiny Express Train to ourselves and rode a figure-eight around the middle of the property. We dug up crystals in the sand and explored a wooden ship atop a hill. We kicked and threw beach balls in a room with fans under our feet, sending the colorful balls skyward. We loaded air cannons with Nerf balls and fired them at perfect strangers. We awkwardly stood in the foam falls attraction for roughly nine seconds, and I paddled us around a shallow pool in a paddleboat that worked my upper body muscles harder than any Bowflex ever could.
And, of course, there was the cave, a year-round 60-degree cavern where Native American bones dating to more than 2,000 years old were found, where Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto came in the mid-1500s, a place that was written about to George Washington in the 1790s. My son was a rockstar. He didn’t slip once descending into the darkness and never said he was scared, even when the lights were shut off and we couldn’t see our fingers an inch from our faces.
We sat through the incredible light show, learned about the mining for gunpowder during the Civil War, and took as many photos as my iPhone could handle. He, even as a 4-year-old, was patient throughout the day, despite July heat, visible ice cream, inner-earth darkness and gift shop treasures. Fellow parents innately understand this.
After our cave tour, we ate pizza and left with a rocket balloon pump toy that has been more my souvenir than his. The one that ended up atop our roof made its way through the downspout weeks later during a summer rain, and my son thought that was hilarious.
The drive home should have been exhausting, but I was too energized from a perfect day to feel those 12,000 steps in my weakened legs. Like always, we took back roads the whole way home. Yellow butterflies darted and fluttered across Highway 76, as if the wind created from my truck moving at 55 mph was evicting them from roadside dandelions. The dirt seemed redder in Childersburg, the pavement hotter. Tunnels of pines opened to American flags everywhere — on porches, power poles, mailboxes and abandoned grocery stores. I created a new game on this drive, and I call it “What do you see more of: Dollar Generals or Alexander Shunnarah billboards?”
White steeples touched the clouds, and I want to go back soon, for a daylong cave trip or simply a picnic at a nearby park. This area is, like the caverns that were renamed in 2022, majestic.
Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.
