LONGHORN CAVERNS – 5 AUGUST 2010
MORE DESCENDING INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH … UM, TEXAS
Longhorn Caverns had been on my
list to explore for a little while now, and as far as I knew, it was the only
cave system in the area I hadn’t been in yet.
There’s a cave system in Sonora , Texas , which is like two to three hours west of San Antonio . The problem with that is, there’s nothing
else out there I wanted to see on the way, so it would be a long trip for a
short item.
Nestled up in Marble Falls Marble Falls
isn’t really far to go from northwest Austin —southern
Cedar Park Burnet
Air Museum
Unlike the other caves in the area
that I visited, this is actually a state park.
There’s still an admission fee to get in, which goes to maintain the
property, but there’s also some old homestead buildings and picnic areas in the
area. The entrance to Longhorn Cavern
was a cave mouth down a small slope. At
some point in the past, a stone staircase had been built to allow entry to it. The tour guide explained that while other
cities have “movies in the park” or other type of civil gatherings, they had
“concerns in the cave.” Bands would set
up inside the cave and play during the summer months when it was really hot
out.
That comment made me various
curious, the idea of large numbers of people in the caves at once. I asked the tour guide if this was a “dead
cave.” His snarky response was “Caves
are made from rocks, and rocks aren’t living.”
To clarify the statement, I asked “Wouldn’t the large numbers of people
coming in affect the growth of the cave?”
Another snarky response followed, this time of “Rocks don’t grow. Learn some Geology.” Ok, something I just can’t let alone. Someone asking a genuine question and getting
a smart-arsed answer is one of them. As
a tour guide, you should have at least some knowledge about the place you’re
showing people.
I tried asking a couple different
questions, in order to allow him the opportunity to answer. The guide wasn’t much older than me,
certainly mid-40s I’d guess, but he reminded me of the guide in the caves of
WonderWorks (in San Marcos ),
who also didn’t like people who obviously knew about caves asking
questions. Eventually, I was able to pry
information out of him, but only because a grey-haired gentleman standing next
to me asked some similar questions. We
were told this cavern was still formed by a combination of earthquakes and
water action, but this cave had never been sealed off during its life. He said there would be some formations
present. Thank you. You couldn’t fucking say that in the first
place? Jackass.
INSIDE THE CAVES
Once we descended the stone
staircase, we came into the entry room.
We were told the caves were named after the cows which frequented the
area, as well as the “burnt orange” color the rocks were. Ok, the first part I’ll believe, but I
consider the second a little unlikely.
Does that mean if there were caverns out by College
Station they’d be called “Aggie Caves
Past the entry chamber, we were
taken on a walk around all the passageways which made up the caves. All commercial caves have lights set up in
order to allow the tourists to see, and this one was no different. What was interesting was I captured a trick
of the light. Obviously my camera didn’t
move, as everything in the show was crystal clear, but somehow a long
snake-like orange light appeared.
Perhaps it was an ancient spirit trapped that was trying to suck out the
soul of the person wearing such an ugly-colored shirt. Unlikely, but we should call T.A.P.S. just in
case. The picture also showed nicely the
rock formations in the cave which gave clues to its origin.
The walking tour went down these
corridors, where the smoothness of the ceiling showed how this was once an
ancient sea floor.
Although other areas had a rippling
effect on the ceiling, which was almost if the waves had been frozen in the
rock. Some of these formations were
caused by gas escaping from the rocks, and it wearing away on softer parts of
the rock above it, thus creating the rippling effect. Either way they were formed, still nice to
look at.
With any cave pictures you take,
you want to capture the natural beauty as much as possible, but you also want
to get something in there for a size reference.
A shot could look impressive, until you inform the viewer they were
seeing a crack only a foot high.
Commercial caves have hand rails on their pathways which are pretty
convenient to use. This allows a viewer
of the pictures to get some idea of the immense size of the caverns, and anyone
with claustrophobia enough of a pause to realize how many tons of rock are
above them.
One thing which was nicely
different about this cave (as opposed to the other ones I’d been in) was there
were minerals embedded into the walls.
These crystal formations are pretty, but have no wealth value. They would cause the light of the guide’s
flashlight to make sparkles as we walked by.
Made you think about how diamonds and other precious stones look in
their nature state before we rip them out of the ground.
One of the last things we saw was
what they described as the “chimney.”
This was a cylinder-like cave that went up about a hundred feet which
used to serve as a roost for a local bat population. While the bat population has long since moved
on, the telltale signs of their presence remained. The black marks on the rock come from
thousands of dirty little bat feet gripping the formations over a long period
of time. It’s another example of the
oils on the skin of humans can damage the formation in a living cave.
This had been the last set of caves
in the Austin
area that I knew of which I hadn’t visited yet.
Compared to all the other caves I’d been too, this rated only slightly
better than WonderWorks in San Marcos . While I’m glad I went to see the sights for
myself, it’s not a place where I’d be hurrying back to anytime. If you’re in the Marble Falls
More information can be found at: www.longhorncaverns.com
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