Natural Bridge Caverns

The largest caverns in Texas, they were pretty awesome. We went on the expensive south cavern adventure tour on which you have to sign away your life before you could take the tour – not comforting. You had to agree not to sue in the event of an injury even if the cause was faulty equipment or equipment malfunction. I had a hard time signing that but the guide said the equipment has never been the reason for any injury. After being geared up we were plunged down a 200 plus foot shaft which was the original entrance through which the explorers found the cave. One at a time we were lowered by one rope attached to our harness. We went down pretty slowly but it was scary because we were so far up and the shaft was only 55 inches wide. Sometimes narrower than that and it was not a straight descent but it was rocky and jagged. But it really wasn’t bad when you could get over that. One third of the way down the shaft opened only for a minute into a room with rock formations everywhere. I was so focussed on staying in the shaft that I hardly noticed the room. If you allow any slack to build on the line you could get pretty hurt so I focussed on staying in the line of descent. A bit later I could start to see an opening which was a relief and I managed to turn around in time to come out facing the right direction, Brad came out backwards, which was cute. Once we were all down, we moved through a number of rooms and passageways some big others small. There were times when you would look up and be amazed by a ceiling so far away with stalactites. Other times we had to crawl in the clay and wet to get to squeeze through to the next opening. My favorite, of course, were the sparkling rocks, which we learned was the mineral in it’s purest form, which makes since. There were these really neat straw formations which dripped almost everywhere from the ceilings. They are hollow formations that allow the water to rip through them, ever so slowly the water leaves behind mineral deposits to make them longer. It is rare to see these long. One thing that makes Natural Bridge Caverns special is how many there are and how long they are. Most were about 3 to 4 feet. There was one that was 14 feet long. We walked right under it. This is the second longest straw formation in the country. The guides were telling us in an effort to protect this special formation as well as the integrity of the cave system itself there is talk of shutting of the adventure tours and only doing the commercialized tours. I see the logic here and there has been an obvious impact on the cave, but I feel lucky to have had that chance and hate to think it will no longer be an option. But there are many other caves out there. For a while we all turned off our headlamps and sat in total darkness for a good 15 minutes – It is always so unnatural and strange to sit in total darkness. It was recommended that we not bring anything valuable or nice so we did not bring the camera, which made my heart hurt, because I thought we wouldn’t get any pictures of the adventure. We have been lucky on this trip and the three other people who went on the tour with us (there were only five of us total!) not only had jellybeans but they had an extra disposable camera that they gave to us. Not only was it sweet of them but now we will have pictures of this experience, which really was incredible. Brad liked it so much that he took the entire roll of film while we were down there! When we came back to the surface fresh air was nice and they had showers for us. The showers were clean and we took advantage since our campsite did not have showers. We gave the family a bar of our handmade soap as a thank you and went onward to San Antonio. I am typing this from a Marriott that we snuck into and with the aid of a maid got into the guest laundry to finally do some laundry. So, not only are we showered but our cloths will be clean too. After our laundry finishes we are going to go downtown San Antonio (since we have already paid for parking). We can’t stay too long because our campsite for tonight is close to two hours away and we are both pretty tired. Our Nuvi crashed so Brad has been on hold for an hour trying to figure out the problem. Hopefully that gets worked out. If we can get the pictures developed and scanned in from the cavern we might post them at a later date! We love and miss you all but we are having a pretty fantastic time!