Fast forward 20-something years to now. We live only several miles away from Inner Space Cavern now. I've been wanting to take Brad and Rob since we moved back to Texas - but we just never have gotten around to it. So this morning I decided we're going.
Little bit of history about the cave before we get to the photos....
Inner Space Cavern was discovered by a Texas Highway Department core drilling team in the Spring of 1963. While drilling through 40 feet of solid limestone, the bit broke into what is now known as Inner Space Cavern. An adventurous employee of the highway department was lowered into the hole while standing on the drill bit and holding tightly to the stem. He was the first human being to enter the cave.
The view while going down the tram to the cave entrance:
We saw several bats. They're currently hybernating and were very still. They were TINY - about the size of a chicken nugget:
You're not allowed to touch anything but the handrails inside the cave since the oils on your fingers and skin can ruin the inside of the cave. One of the few areas you could touch was this rock...I believe it was called Temptation Rock...as someone touched it and it stopped growing due to the oils in the skin. So now, you can touch it:
So many beautiful areas! It got super humid down there....It was in the upper 70's and you could SEE the humidity. The photo below looks fuzzy...but it was actually the humidity that was causing a light fog:
Due to several large sink holes that date back to the ice age, many bones were found of ice age animals...including mammoth and sabertooth tigers. One of the interesting things is that they had to stop excavating because the humidity is so incredibly high that the bones, if picked up, literally disintegrated. It wasn't dry enough for the animal to fully decompose I guess. So they left the remains of the dig site for current visitors to see...there is even a baby mammoth bone they left by the dig site so it remains undisturbed and intact.
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