San Antonio's Natural Bridge Caverns
is a wonderful place to explore with your adventuresome family!
It really is an amazing underground world of natural beauty.
Photographs cannot begin to capture what you see in person.
You'll have to come and experience it for yourself.
You will not be disappointed!
There are a variety of tours available.
We took the Discovery Tour.
They also have one that is more extravagant,
because you will be fully-geared just like
you will actually explore the cave by going through tight passages,
hang from ropes, get wet and other cave exploration activities.
Definitely for the more spirited adventuresome individual!
taken from the waiting area... looks like a typical Texas scene in the wintertime ... who would suspect that there is another world waiting to be discovered underneath our feet
the limestone bridge (top view) is about 60-feet high... this area used to be a cave, which collapsed due to erosion... the start of the descent to the caverns to the bottom left... looks dark and scary :P
anyway, that's where the four students from St. Mary University in San Antonio originally found an 18" opening to the caverns... they felt a cool draft, which indicates that there are rooms and passages to be discovered and they were right! 2 miles below the ground... i can't even imagine... recently, they even found new areas that have rare formations... would love to see that next time
first sight as we enter the cave... doesn't look like much yet, but those stalactite and stalagmites took thousands years or more to form...
The Discovery Tour descends to the equivalent of 18-story building! hard to believe we went down that deep... you get so captivated by all the strange, but beautiful formations...
the temp inside the cavern stays at 70 degrees F year round and 99% humidity
the only flat area inside the cave... man-made of course
Purgatory Creek... so far they have discovered 2 miles of this place
amazing!
looks like melting wax... it's forbidden to touch these formations or they turn black from the bacteria in human hands...
the tall guys from our group had to dip their heads or end-up hurting their bonnets, ouch
descending to the depths of the earth... you can barely see the winding path... i'm amazed that the camera took descent photos that i had to turn off the flash or else we'd end up with washed up pics... still wish there were more details :P
to think that these speleothem probably took millions of years to form, amazing!
our tour guide, giving us all the history and interesting facts :)
that's a huge column! the cascading multi-color ground is also fascinating
We're in "The King's Room"
Those chandeliers are beautiful!
Delightful experience! Would love to explore more caverns somewhere :)
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