My family and our friends recently visited Longhorn Caverns in Burnet, TX. It was similar to Inner Space Caverns, which we've visited many times because it's near where we live.
It's amazing how little color you see underground. Everything is muted shades of beige. It's only with industrial lighting that you can even see the details of the walls and ceiling.This cave is a little different than some others because instead of being formed by water percolating down, it was formed by an underwater river rushing mostly horizontally.
We saw only one animal on the entire trip which was called the tricolor bat. The colors are on individual hairs though so he just looked brown.
You can see a better picture than the ones I took here.
The park ranger was very proud of the "hall of diamonds" which was lined with calcite crystals. Calcite is a very soft crystal that can't really be made into jewelry, but some of the crystals were impressively large. The general rule about crystals is that larger ones take longer to form, so the areas that remained under water for longer had larger crystals than the higher areas which drained first.
This cave had first been used by the Native Americans to find flint for points, then was taken over by Civil War military to make gunpowder and eventually ended up as a night club. Later, a government organization called the CCC cleared out a lot more of the cavern and installed paths, making it a much better attraction.
I was impressed by the rounded ceilings left by rushing water. It looked like something out of Dune.
But as seen above, the water doesn't hollow everything out and seems to leave strange, grotesque rock formations in random areas.
Wandering around in the dark underground. We could have felt lost.
But I never did. I trusted that the one who was guiding me knew where we were going. Though it was dark, I knew I would see the light again. I just kept taking one step after the next, believing that the way I was going would lead me back up.
May your day and week be blessed,
--Pam