Feeling a bit cramped?

On a family vacation several years ago, I learned what claustrophobia was all about.

We arrived at Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park in Montana and all of the family made it into the opening for the then self-guided tour. That’s when our youngest daughter, Kim, said she wouldn’t go through the underground cavern. She said that she couldn’t handle being in cramped spaces.

So she got back out of the entrance to the cavern. I showed her where we would come out, and she went there to wait for us to do the cavern route.

I had tried to persuade her to stay with us and that we would be right there with her. Nope!

On another vacation we stopped at Carlsbad Cavern National Park, and because that cavern has more wide-open spaces she was able to handle it.

I became the issue in that cavern. I was reading the literature they gave to us when the tour ranger said to be careful that we were coming into an area where some things would be hanging down over the walkway. He no sooner told us that when I walked right into one.

I remember that my knees buckled and soon blood was pouring down on my head.

We were just about in the big cavern room when it happened where I was given first aid for my bloody head.

That’s the closest that I ever came to being knocked out.

It still brings a laugh from my family whenever the issue is brought up.

My wife and I were on a driving trip to the east coast and were returning through St. Louis when I learned what it was like to be confined to a tight area.

We had just completed a visit to the museum near the base of the Gateway Arch National Park. We got into one of the cars that would take us to the top of the 630-foot-high arch when it hit me. 

I now knew the feeling that our daughter Kim had in Montana, years earlier.

It was a miserable trip to the top, one that I never took again.

The top was equal to being up 63 stories.

I always knew that I was afraid of heights, but wasn’t aware that I had problems with tight spaces.

At the top there was a space where you could stand and look out and see for some 30 miles.

The cars were noisy and I felt at the time not safe.  But they are still rolling people up to the top.

The federal government paid 75% of the arch’s cost with the city of St. Louis paying the other 25%.