Blue Springs Cave is located on private property owned by the Carr family. Lonnie Carr is caver friendly and a tremendous asset to the caving community. There are other caves on his land also.

The following trip report is old, but good, so it is still here. Most of us "locals" have been in the cave many times, but the following story is from my first experience in the cave. First time adventures are so grand. The excitement, the unknown. New friends to cave with. New things to photograph. Enjoy the story:

     David Anderson of the Nashville Grotto and Bill Walter of the Spencer Mountain Grotto put this trip together for 1-30-1999. It was planned as a trail marking and flagging expedition. David also had plans on experimenting with using water in hand pumped,  pressurized containers to try to clean some formations that had been stepped on by a previous group of visitors. Greg and Jackie King and myself represented the Upper Cumberland Grotto. David Anderson, Eric McMaster, Kristen Nymen, and Kristen's friend Kim (who was visiting from Connecticut) represented the Nashville Grotto. The Spencer Mountain Grotto was represented by Bill Walter, Tim Curtis, and Pete Kinsey.
     We met at the cave about 10:30 am but had some confusion on where to meet and when we finally did meet up half of the group was already inside the cave experimenting with David's water tank idea. (Note: The water tank idea provided some positive results, but was not satisfactory.) That left Greg and Jackie, Myself, Tim, and Pete on our own at first.
     Blue Springs Cave is located right next to a road. We had to hike a short distance down a damp hillside to very unassuming spring that emerges from the base of a rock bluff to reach the entrance. The entrance is gated. We proceeded into the cave after unlocking the gate. The cave opens into a large entrance room that continues for at least 300 feet. It averages about 6 feet in height, has many large formations, and is a quite beautiful cave in it's own right. This part of the cave is all that was known for many, many years. Thomas Barr described this cave in his now legendary Caves Of Tennessee book as having only one room. Through patience, hard work, determination, and rock-solvent the cave was finally opened up at the rear of the entrance room. This happened almost 10 years ago.
     To reach the "new" section of Blue Springs we proceeded to the back of the entrance room and passed through a tiny steel gate. Gate number two if you're counting. If you are a real large person--forget it, you wont fit. Tim Curtis was first through the gate and I followed close behind. Greg, Jackie and Pete brought up the rear. After I crawled through the little, tiny gate I looked up and realized that Tim was just plain gone. He can move pretty fast and he had been in the cave a few times before. So I was alone. I took off on a hopeless mission to try to catch Tim. Well that never happened. So I am crawling on my hands and knees and the solid limestone walls are actually scraping both my left and right sides at the same time. Then I begin scraping my back on the ceiling. What a tight squeeze! The tunnel continues like this for a while until it gradually begins to get taller.....and skinnier. Eventually I had to hop on one leg with the rest of my body squished up into the top of the passage as there was no room at the bottom. Then it got wide again--Whew! There is a hole in the floor I had  to traverse (there is a hand-line) and there is a steel ladder that drops through the hole about 15' into the main tunnel of the new cave(see pic).
     We met the rest of the group right at the ladder as they were just finishing their experiment with the water tanks. The entire group of ten people headed through the main bore hole to do some trail marking and sightseeing. This cave is very pristine. Because it had to be "coaxed" to gain access, and then it was immediately gated, there is very little destruction and no vandalism in Blue Springs. Most destruction was done by accident not carelessness. That is why we were there. To provide clearly marked "trails" inside the cave to guide future cavers on their journey. We set off towards the first large junction room. Getting around inside Blue Springs is typically quite easy. Most of the bore holes are very large and most obstacles are merely large boulders deposited centuries ago from breakdown. However, there are places where huge domepits and huge flows of flowstone make proceeding very difficult and slow. The first of these places encountered is the "Traverse."
    Fortunately for our group Tim Curtis had just finished putting a brand new rope (for a hand line) across the traverse when we arrived there. We were just walking along when our progress was halted by a huge flowstone. We got on our hands and knees and proceeded through pools of rimstone and very low stalactites to the edge of the "Traverse." People all do the traverse differently. Most try to stay parallel to the wall and cross on their knees while hanging on to the rope. Others try to just walk across it. Taking Tim's advice, I walked it. I crawled under a very low stalactite and turned immediately to my left and grabbed the hand line(see pic). The pit is right there. About 30 feet straight down a smooth flowstone. I got my feet real close to the base of that wall and I leaned way back out over the pit. This put the force of my weight directly on my feet and allowed me enough friction to cross with ease. This is the fastest, and probably the safest way to cross as you do not slip this way.
     We made the decision to split up after the traverse. Tim Curtis went on down to the next large junction room (by the moonscape) and we went the other direction towards the Ships Prow. On the way we lined up what must of been about 100 small rocks to mark the "trail." We also spent a great deal of time flagging the passages through the breakdown. It is often very easy to lose the trail in the breakdown and the next thing you know you are standing exactly in the wrong place. We also found a very large dirt mound with a gentle slope to it that was the home to cave beetles. Some careless visitor had walked right through the middle of the soft dirt and left 6-8" deep footprints in it. We carefully smoothed the dirt back down with our hands. It is assumed that cave beetles will walk across the dirt enough to hide our hand prints. I don't know for sure about that. I do know that our hand prints looked better than 6 inch gashes in otherwise virgin cave soil(see pic). We continued on to the Ships Prow which is a massive (and I mean MASSIVE) rock protrusion that looks like the very tip of a large sailing vessel. It has the point and the keel and everything.
     Bill and I then left the main group and made a quick trip back through the main passage to where we turned off and left Tim. The turnoff consists of getting on your hands and knees and crawling through a very wide (about 25') but very low (about 2 1/2 to 3') passage with various loose gravel, gypsum, rimstone and anything else the cave could throw at us to make the trip miserable. That crawl is short (maybe 50 or 60') but you'll remember it! Bill just flat-out left me right here. Man is he fast. Bill is in good physical shape and is the only person I have ever met who could move that fast through a cave. Wow! He stopped and waited on me twice. Hummm. That never happens. What a change of pace. Anyway, the crawl suddenly opens into a borehole passage. Problem is the passage is up on top of a flowstone shelf that is about 10 feet off of the ground. We had to pass under the flowstone shelf and then shimmy up a chimney in the wall (just wide enough to provide plenty of friction) to the next level. The passage gets fairly easy just past the chimney and we basically just walked until we got to a large junction room (with a stream in the floor) where Tim was reclined in the dirt, enjoying the solitude by candle light waiting for us. This junction room is just outside of the breakdown pile that leads up to the moonscape room.
     The moonscape room is simply amazing. It is a very large, dry rimstone pool that is about 30' feet wide and maybe 40' from front to back. It has several large mounds inside the perimeter of the rimstone pool. Each mound in turn has a little depression on the very top of it. Each mound looks like a little volcano. There are about 10 large mounds (about 2 feet tall and 3 feet across at base) and about 40 to 60 much smaller mounds (measured in inches). The ceiling and the walls of the rimstone are covered in white, crystalline crust. It is truly a moonscape(see pic).
     We doubled back from the moonscape and met back up in the junction room and had our lunch. We then headed down the main bore hole passage, alongside the stream. We placed many stones here along the stream to mark the path. Most of the floor was flowstone with a thin layer of mud over it.  We continued on toward the Cathedral room, the destination of our journey. The Cathedral room is less than 3 miles into the cave, and the cave has been mapped at over 33 miles so far, making it the largest surveyed cave in Tennessee.
 The passage is blocked again by a huge flow that nearly closes off the passage. Nature had provided a very small opening at the top of the flow. We climbed up and shimmied through the hole to pass through the giant flow and emerged into the most beautiful room of rimstone pools you can imagine. The pools are terraced and have hundreds of stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The pools hug a gigantic flowstone on the left side of the room and they continue on the right side about 20 feet back in a circular fashion to make a giant, almost round room with flow on the left and pool after pool in succession, lined up under the stalactites and soda straws on the right(see pic). The bad news? The only way through this part is THROUGH the pools. The problem is that they are much deeper than they appear. They look about 6 inches deep, but in reality they are about knee to waist deep, depending on where you are. There are several rimstone pool shelves or "lillypads"  in the pools on the left that hug the giant flow. You can step from "lillypad" to "lillypad" but as soon as the first person goes in, the water clouds up and you can't see them anymore. So we each got a good look at where the lillypads were and then we proceeded by memory and feel. All ten people made it to every lillypad and no one got wet any deeper than their calf's.
     We then emerged at the other side of the giant flow that blocked the passage. We were on top of a huge pile of breakdown and flowstone about 40' above the floor. Tim, Pete, and David tied off a hand line of nylon webbing to provide a safer descent into the passage. While Tim was getting the hand line attached, Bill and I took off down the face of the breakdown and climbed down to the floor where we began some more flagging of breakdown passages. The group continued through this passage, flagging and scrambling, until at last we reached the Cathedral room.
     The Cathedral Room is really just a huge breakdown room. There are massive piles of boulders in the floor that have laid still for a millennium as evidenced by all the flow that is on top of the breakdown. It is a testament to the stability of breakdown once it has formed it's own idea of perfect dome and stress levels. As you enter the room you are presented with a rock shelter on the left that is totally encased in gleaming white flow. It looks almost like a snow bank. And out of this flow extend columns that are dark tan in color. What a contrast. The whole scene is neatly tucked behind a  huge boulder and is enclosed in the rock shelter. The whole rock shelter is glazed on top, sides, bottom. and even spilling out to the floor in front of the shelter, with two-tone flowstone(see pic). The room is an interesting contrast because it is really just a regular old breakdown room punctuated by overwhelming points of interest and beauty.
     Greg and Bill spent quite some time flagging off the flowstone rock-shelter and then we moved on up into the larger portion of the Cathedral Room. We were immediately presented with a 25-30' column that was brown on the bottom, gradually mixed with white as it ascended upwards, to a narrow point no more than 4 inches across. From the narrow point (at mid height) the column began to be wrapped in a gleaming white bacon strip formation. Pictures can't do this column justice(but there is one anyway).
     Beyond the column the walls are decorated with every type of flowstone you can imagine. There are draperies that are 30' tall and extend for 15-20' wide. There are stalagmites that stand 6' and 10' tall. There are white semi-translucent bacon strips streaming down from the ceiling along the wall in one spot. The walls look like they have pipe organ pipes on them in other places.
     One very alive formation in the middle of the room is forming right in the breakdown. It is about 10 feet of solid, gleaming white flowstone just oozing across the breakdown punctuated in the middle by a cluster of stocky, short gleaming white stalagmites. There is even a solid white, wet, rimstone pool in the formation that is about 8 inches across at its widest point. The formation has several solid white stalagmites jutting up from the breakdown.It is a site to behold(see pic).
Since this trip report is long enough already, let me just say this for the trip out. We all retraced our path back out of the cave all the way to the ladder.
     We flagged a couple of spots in the entrance room on the way out and then we all emerged at the outside gate to the smiling and clean face of Greg King, our Grotto President. He had gotten a head start out of the cave and had gotten changed and dry already. That lucky dog. Well we all said our good-byes and Greg gave Pete and I a ride to our trucks where we split up and went home happy, tired and full of fresh cave memories.