Cave Parties This Weekend: "Greatest Bash Since the Stone Age"

Organizers are planning two parties this weekend in an old sand mine outside Crystal City that they boast will be the best blowouts in many, many millennia. Greatest party since the Stone Age, they claim.

Heading up the efforts is Tom Kerr, owner of the mine and a character who factored heavily in an RFT cover story I wrote last year about a proposed iron-ore smelter in Crystal City. (Kerr is adamantly opposed to the smelter which would operate adjacent to his mines.)

A California transplant with a penchant for flowered Hawaiian shirts, Kerr bought the sand mines a couple years back with plans of turning them into a Jules-Verne-inspired sports and entertainment complex called Crystal City Underground.

In the meantime, though, Kerr is helping celebrate the triumph of fellow cave enthusiast, Curt Sleeper. As you may recall, Sleeper is that guy who built a home into a nearby cave and recently put it up for sale on eBay when he could not afford the mortgage payment.

Well the good news is that Sleeper was able to refinance his mortgage earlier this month, allowing him and his family to stay in their cave.

To celebrate the news, Kerr is throwing a party in his sand mine (directions here) on Friday night. The festivities will include live music, bocce ball and a drum circle -- because, really, isn't that how real cavemen would have done it?

Kerr follows up on Saturday by hosting an "adult easter egg hunt" at the cave, proceeds of which will go to Concerned Citizens for Crystal City -- a group fighting plans for the smelter.

For more information on all of this, checkout thecaveparty.com.