I have passed these caverns probably 100 times while traveling on Interstate 10 in West Texas on my way to Big Bend and have never stopped....soooo in keeping with this journey and sampling the most beautiful places that North America has to offer, I took the opportunity to stop and tour it.
The $20 tour lasted almost 2 hours and covered about 2 miles of passageways. It is a limestone cave carved by water between 1.5 and 5 millions years ago and somewhere between 1 and 3 million years ago the water drained from the cave. The mineral formations, known as speleothems, all formed after the water drained from the cave. They are still forming and growing today.
There were several pools of water and the deeper we descended into the earth the wetter it got...it was warm and felt like 100 % humidity.
The $20 tour lasted almost 2 hours and covered about 2 miles of passageways. It is a limestone cave carved by water between 1.5 and 5 millions years ago and somewhere between 1 and 3 million years ago the water drained from the cave. The mineral formations, known as speleothems, all formed after the water drained from the cave. They are still forming and growing today.
There were several pools of water and the deeper we descended into the earth the wetter it got...it was warm and felt like 100 % humidity. 
The most amazing (to me) of the calcite crystal formations are called helictites. They have a curved or angular form that seem to defy gravity, growing sideways or up.......supposedly there is a room not open to the public that is full of these formations!
No comments:
Post a Comment