WE SLEPT 220 FEET BELOW GROUND (worth $1,000 per night?)

Tonight, we are sleeping in the deepest. This is so crazy. Darkest.

Oldest hotel room in the world.

It shakes so much.

Completely alone in this cave, 220ft below ground.

We are Karen Nate, and we traveled the world full time for four years visiting 100 countries. But 2020 brought us back to the US where we bought our first home. A convert sprinter van. We own a house. If you missed last week's video, we canceled the rest of our Pacific coast highway road trip due to new travel advisories on the west coast.

We're urging everyone to stay home and.

We took this as a sign that it was time to head home for the holidays.

Feel like I've been transported back in time 50 years.

We are 20 hours into this crazy road trip, but we'll catch you up on that next week because this place deserves a video all to itself.

On the outside, it looks like just another quirky hotel on Route 66. But as the name suggests, there is actually a cave underneath this motel. They run tours through it during the day, but at night, after the last tourist leaves, they rent out what they claim to be the deepest, darkest motel room in the world. 220ft below ground. And we have the cave all to ourselves. We've had the opportunity to stay in some pretty unique places over the last few years, but this might just be the craziest.

So when I booked this place, I did not realize I was signing up to sleep in a haunted cave, but paranormal activity. Oh, man. The five o' clock tour, the one that we're going down on, is a ghost tour. And then we have to sleep in the cave the whole night.

You're going to get a ghost meter. If you feel like there's a ghost around, you take your flashlight. You're going to do a complete 360. If that meter doesn't move, there's nothing around. You.

Guys ready?

Wow.

Now we are descending down 210ft or 21 stories below the surface, or 64 meters.

Oh my gosh.

Totally dark in here. You cannot see the hanging in front of your face. Oh yeah, we're going this way.

If I act really strange cuz there's a ghost around me.

You know what?

There is one here. And I'm going to shoot a picture.

I really hope a ghost doesn't show up in this picture because we have to sleep down here.

That's our sweet. That's where we're sleeping tonight.

Oh my gosh.

And there's a voice in there says Jenna.

What?

Huh?

So this is where we think we see the ghost. And that's where we're sleeping.

And you have controls of all the lights in your suite. It does get totally dark in here. You cannot see the hand in front of your face. Go ahead, shut your lights off, folks. Look how dark it gets in here. Okay, shut your light off. There you go. This is what it's going to be like when you guys are in the cabin suite. So this is your option. It's either you can have your lights on or off.

I think my heart would escape the beat.

You're more than welcome. I'll get the lights on for you guys first.

Roll. Appreciate it.

Well, that was a very interesting introduction to our home for the night. My dad's always said I don't believe in ghosts, but I'm scared of them. I think that's how I feel as well. So I'm just going to try to not think about that anymore.

All right, we got our stuff and we're about to move in or move down.

All right, down the light this time. So we're gonna be alone down in the cave tonight, but Chris is gonna be up top. He's the keeper of the cave.

Keeper of the cave. What's up, guys? I'm Chris, and we're dropping 210ft underground right now.

So if anything goes wrong, we have an emergency phone and we can give them a call. How often does that happen?

Who's asking? Temperatures stay relatively stable between, you know, 56 and 62 degrees year round.

This is awesome.

It looks so much bigger.

So before we move in for the night, Chris is gonna give us a tour around the cave. Completely different experience with the lights on.

Formations would have began a couple hundred million years ago during the Mississippian era. This would have been underwater.

Yeah, it does look like coral.

So it's our largest cavern, 630ft from one side to the other. All these supplies were actually brought down here in the early 60s. We were in the Cold war at the time. Cub missile crisis. And President Kennedy would have deemed a handful of the cave systems in North America as a nuclear fallout shelter in case we got nuked. So here we're looking at supplies. The last 2,000 people. Two weeks, allegedly. Good luck, right? Not happening.

Oh, my gosh.

Not crazy appetizing, but.

Oh, cheers. We are eating 60 year old crackers right now.

Oh.

Oh, that's bad. It's so stale. Hopefully we never have to hide out in here. Oh, Do I have to finish it? You try it.

Mmm. All the saliva's gone from my mouth. I can't believe I'm eating a ration from the Cold War. Yes, I am eating history.

So this is a dry cave. And only 3% of caves in the entire world. Or dry caves. So there's almost no humidity in here. And because of that, things get preserved really well. So that bobcat that you could still see the whiskers on was almost 200 years old. This helps give you some appreciation for just how big this place is.

Cavern suite. If you're crazy enough like YouTube, some people want to rent the place out, so.

That looks so cool.

I love it.

I like the little dog, Rocky the rockweiler.

Oh, I didn't even see that.

Yeah. The red seats on the stage were donated from the American Film Institute in Hollywood.

You got rolling in the deep down or.

Someone like you? Someone like you.

Oh, okay.

Have I missed the beginning little loop right back.

Right. Okay. I heard.

That you're settled down.

That was like, my dream come true.

Good night.

Cave is all yours. Enjoy.

See you in the morning.

Oh, yeah.

Good night. Time to party.

Got this whole place to ourselves.

This feels. Hey. Oh.

We are now the only people in this cave and will be until tomorrow morning.

Not just the only people, the only living organisms.

Because it's a dry cave and there's, like, no humidity, nothing can live down here.

Nothing can survive.

There's nothing to eat for us for a night.

All right, I'm going to give you a full tour of the oldest, deepest, darkest, largest, quietest motel room on the planet. The walls are 65 million years old. We are 220ft below the surface. It's 155ft wide by 400ft long and 75ft tall. I'd say this is the biggest hotel room I've ever stayed in. So this is our bedroom. We have two queen beds and a futon. Now, it's not cheap to rent an entire cave. We paid $1,000 for one night in suite. But if you had some friends that you could split it with, we probably should have invited some friends over here. I think that this is the most important part of the entire suite because have I mentioned that we're 220ft below ground? This telephone is our only connection to the outside world. If something were to go wrong. And over here, this is our lovely living room area. And I love what the owners have done here because they could have easily just put two beds and been like, you're sleeping in a cave, and that would have been cool enough, but they've added so many little touches that just make it extra special. 1932. 1930. Like, they have all of these super old National Geographic magazines. This book is almost 100 years old. The watch of railroad accuracy.

For some reason, I love seeing the old ads.

Yeah, I'm honestly not a huge reader, but I just want to sit here and read all of these books. And we have this giant TV with about 100 movies to choose from, most of them being horror films, which we will not be watching in this haunted cave. I swear I just saw something.

Don't say that.

Oh, you know what I think it was? There's, like, lights lining the the steps to the top. And there was, like, a bar. And when I, like, moved the lights went behind the bar and I thought I saw, like, movement. I think it was just the light.

My heart honestly skipped a beat.

I was just, like, trying not to think about all that haunted stuff that guy told us.

Yeah. So we're not watching a scary movie tonight.

We're gonna be using that phone soon.

We also have a bunch of board games, a chess board, and this is our dining room table where they've left us lots of stuff, Sweet and salty snacks. Plus we have a kitchen. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little bit nervous. I thought there was no way I was gonna get my morning cup of joe in a cave. Which is why I was so excited when I saw this coffee pot. They've also given us a bottle of wine to enjoy. We have a sink and a microwave and a fridge that they've stocked with drinks and breakfast for the morning. And behind this wall and behind this entertainment, entertainment system, we have a bathroom with these awesome saloon doors, sink with running water, this marine toilet that you just use, like, regular toilet, and then use the swoop pedal to flush. A full shower with soaps, full length mirror, towels, everything we need. And that is the suite. It is seriously incredible. And our room backs up to this concert area that they just finished building. Going to start having musicians come down here and play because this natural arch of the cave apparently produces the most beautiful acoustics imaginable, which is probably why I sounded so good earlier. Someone like you.

The other thing that I love about this place is I had a feeling when they left, they were going to give us all the rules for the night and tell us not to leave the suite for our own safety. But we are free to explore this entire cave.

There's no rules.

There's no rules. There's no rules. Put your shirt back on. There's one rule.

This is weird.

This is so weird.

It's a lot scarier when you're alone.

So back in 1927, there was this guy named Walter, and he was riding his horse to go play poker. And all of a sudden, his horse stopped at this giant nine foot foot wide hole. And when Walter got off and looked, it was just darkness. And he had to know what was down there. So his buddies lowered him in, and long story short, he discovered this cave.

It's quite climbing up here.

So this is the original entrance to the cave. The same hole that Walter lowered himself into. Once tourists started coming, they built this giant ladder, swinging bridge thing, all made from scaffolding from the Hoover Dam. And we're gonna climb it because we can.

Wow. That looks super sketchy.

Oh, my gosh. I hate this.

It does not sound very stable.

Stop, Nate.

I'm climbing on wood that was used during the construction of the Hoover Dam.

Hundred feet above the floor of a cave.

Okay.

I think that's it. The original entrance. But they've boarded it off now so no one can come down and visit us in the night. Which I appreciate.

This is just nuts. Like, the fact that we're here and we're alone. Like, I feel like we're breaking the rules right now.

I love.

Shakes so much. It is just such a different feeling being in here alone. Ghost, stop saying that.

This is pretty cool. So if you don't actually want to spend the night in the cave, you can at least come have dinner down here and get a little bit of a feel for what it's like. And you could just come see it. But there's something different about doing something so comfortable in such a crazy place. Yeah, it's just the contrast of being in a cave. But having dinner at a table with a white tablecloth.

We tried.

We'll practice.

This is nice. I can't remember if it can go backwards. It can go anywhere. That way you don't actually kill the game. You just get them in check. Knife.

I think these can go one any direction.

What if we don't play this and read the cool books?

Okay.

Good idea.

No.

Sounds crazy.

Fonts have not changed that much. That's pretty crazy.

I don't know where the night went, but it's already 1am We've been told that this breaker turns out all the lights in the cave except for the lights in our bedroom.

Wow.

Look at how our bedroom's just glowing.

You're walking so fast.

This is awesome. I feel like the record player going makes it seem, like, almost creepy.

Is it soft?

It's Cold in the cave.

Getting darker.

All right.

Don't see your face for a long time.

I'm pretty sure when I hit the switch, it's gonna be complete darkness.

Whoa.

Except for the TV light.

A few little red lights from the electronics, but.

It'S so quiet, my ears are ringing.

Like when I swallow, it's so loud. Or even when I breathe.

Good night.

Love you.

Love you.

Sorry I kissed your nose.

This is hard to find your face.

Morning. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I'm a grown man who slept with a light on last night.

It.

How'd you sleep?

Great.

Really?

Yeah.

It's 7:30, but it still feels like the middle of the night. So crazy.

I don't like this at all. So dark.

Ah. I'm not gonna lie. I think I would have slept better if we wouldn't have gone on the ghost tour before sleeping down here. The silence was just intense. And I felt like I was just laying there listening for any little sound. I just kept telling myself, you're a grown up. You're a grown up, you're a grown up.

I didn't wake up a single time. I opened my eyes and thought it was the middle of the night when you were making coffee.

Coffee.

And I was so confused.

Never thought I'd shower in a caveman. Pretty cool hole in the ground. And here are the lucky suite members right here.

Good morning.

This is what happens if you stage along in the cave. These two haven't seen seen the surface in years. Get to the sunlight. Go see some sunlight, folks. Come on.

Yeah. Now, this is the cavern suite. Available for rent.

First cave tour of the day just started.

Goodbye, cave suite.

It is now 11am we got down here at 5pm last night, which means we've now been living in a cave for 18 hours. Time to go back up to the surface.

Back to the real world. Here you go.

Thanks for coming back for us, Chris.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you guys a whole lot for stopping by, taking the time to.

Hop off the interstate.

Seriously, people like you might want to keep the doors open.

Feels weird seeing the daylight. I wonder what we missed the last 18 hours.

Oh, it's so bright.

Ah, my eyes.

I'm not kidding. My eyes actually like are in pain right now.

All right.

Should we buy this one?

Drive it back behind the van, you think?

We'll just do a fair trade. The van for this car? How good would this be to drive home?

Look at the teeny tiny windshield wipers.

You look good in that car, right?

You think? I Can get in it. The dash is literally made of wood.

Are you supposed to be in there?

I feel like there are no rules here. And it might be haunted. We may not actually be alone.

Quit that.

There's some souvenir Grand Canyon caverns. Waters that were brought down here. They are expired. I drink them all the time. They taste fine.

And from the Internet, no interest. They didn't have Internet.

The guessbook does say that paranormal activity has happened during the night to lots of people.

Stop that.

I read a bunch of.

Stop that. Stop that. Lighting environment too dark. Visual positioning inaccurate. Fly with caution. Unable to take off. Okay. GPS signal low. That makes sense. Didn't cover flying inside of a cave on the exam that I took. Give myself less than a 50% chance of not crashing this thing.

Good job, little buddy.

All right, we're going on an adventure into the mystery room.

I don't think Birkenstocks were made for spelunking.

Carrie here was the last guy that tried to go down in Birkenstocks.

He even had a headlamp. This is sweet.

The last light in the cave right there. This red one.

Oh, no.

This is some serious exploring.

It's getting a little tight. This is so crazy.

Can you make it?

Yeah, yeah. Pretty insane.

So crazy. Just did this exists?

Now we know about it.

Yeah, you really undersold that. Yeah. Let's go further back.

Yeah.

That's the best twinkle, twinkle I've ever played.

That's the only other side. Okay, now I'm gonna sing Adele.

Y' all really went for it. I thought that was going to be, like, the first 30 seconds of the.

That was, like, my dream come true. Like, getting to perform with no one, I guess. There's, like, a lot of people watching on YouTube.

I'm impressed. I'm impressed on all fronts.

I didn't think I had that in me either. I lost it at a couple points.

I wasn't sure if I was even thinking saying the right words, like, I'll figure it out.

You kept me going.

I've been practicing my adulting.