In Austin, At Last

We are now in Austin.  We are camping at McKinney Falls State Park.  Click here to see a video on McKinney Falls State Park.

Today, we went to the Inner Space Caverns and it was huge inside.  It is a cave that is underground, which was formed by water.  It goes 100 feet deep and goes under the interstate.  Pretty cool!  The number one thing to NOT do is to touch anything.  That is because the oils from your hands can damage the rock formations in the caverns.  The second thing to know is to stay with your group.  It's a big cave!  The paths go on for five miles and some go on in total darkness.  The cave was discovered when the highway engineers were looking for fifty feet of solid rock to put the interstate on.  The engineers drilled holes in the ground and these holes can be seen in the cavern.  In Texas, if a cave is found on someone's property, it's their cave.  So, this is a private cave.  We walked for about a mile in the caverns.  One of the cool things we saw was a bat but we didn't get a picture because bats do not like flash.  It wakes them up.

The only formation we were allowed to touch was this one.  It died from other people touching it.

This was the first part of the caverns that the  engineers found.

There are some low overhangs, like this one where we had to duck to get down the path.