Cavern Of Sonora TX(11-14-12)

“If you only go into one cave in your lifetime, go into this one”.  So says my husband, who has been in numerous caves, including Carlsbad Caverns.  What’s funny is that we found this cavern accidently.  After a brief but enjoyable visit with Paul’s mom, we headed clear across Texas and were on the hunt for a place to stop for the night, on the way to Austin.  The RV park that popped up in our path is called “Cavern of Sonora RV Park”.  Well, after seeing the name,  we googled to see if there are indeed caverns,  Trip Advisor rates this cavern as a 5 out of 5.  Pretty good!

We decided it was worth the stop, and booked two nights so we could take the 2 hour tour the next day.

This cave is very alive, and still growing. Unlike most other caves, it’s quite warm and humid in this cave.  Because the cave has no major openings, the carbon dioxide level is also higher than you would usually find. 

They actually monitor the carbon dioxide levels and when it’s raining outside, and therefore the humidity is at 100%, they open both “doors” to the cave to let fresh air in.

As we walked through the cave, we could visibly see the changes that were happening due to the moisture in the cave, causing the formations to grow. Water dripped on a regular basis.

There were only two other people on the tour with us, and our guide gave us a special treat.  She led us into a room that is no longer open to tours. The owner of the cave (it’s privately owned) got tired of people touching the cave formations and stopped people from going into the most beautiful room of all.  We all promised to be good, and she showed us a spectacular room!

Our guide did something pretty typical on a cave tour, but with a slightly different twist.  We came to an area with benches and she had us all sit down so she could turn off all the lights and have us experience total darkness. After explaining that even night vision goggles wouldn’t work in the cave because they have to have a tiny bit of light to magnify, she did an experiment.

After we had adjusted to the complete darkness, she had us hold the palm of our hand in front of our face, touching our nose, then bring it out about 4 inches.  She told us to wave our hand back and forth.  Amazingly,  I could see the shadow of my hand moving. Then she told us to close our eyes and wave our hand.  Oops,  I could still “see” the shadow moving.  Our brain expects to see it, so it does.

All in all, walking through the cavern felt like a Disney ride- quite surreal and totally amazing. There are more pictures of the cave if you click on Recent Pictures.