I had an errand earlier this week to take something to a friends' house in another neighborhood. I'm always on the lookout for variety in my morning walks, so I took advantage of this excuse to walk around a different neighborhood.
The friends live on Cave Lane, and I knew that the street name wasn't an accident, having heard about an extensive cave network in that area. But I didn't know its exact location and wasn't really thinking about it on this occasion. However, there it was!
I thought it was pretty cool at the time to stumble (I didn't literally stumble) upon this gem, right on a major NE San Antonio thoroughfare. And you'll see in the pix below just how cool it is. But if you take the time to read about it on the TCMA website you'll really understand how astonishing this place is. (Particularly take a look at the "History" section of the website...amazing stuff!)
This is a view looking down at the sinkhole where the cave entrance is, from a handy walkway up on top:
It's a pretty impressive sinkhole and even without the cave entrance below, it would be an attraction worth visiting. The trail leading down to the bottom is rocky, but easy enough to manage. Here's a look at it on my way down. Notice the bridge at the top, from which I took the previous picture:
And here's a look at it heading back up:
When you get to the bottom, I must admit the cave entrance is a little underwhelming. But as I learned from the website, it must open up pretty soon after you get inside. However, some crawling is required at first:
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| no, that's not a skeleton, but just some white rocks in an interesting configuration |
How could you guess, looking at these barely-person-sized holes, what lies beyond! Since up on top they display this map, you do have some idea...
Not a bad "discovery" for a normal morning walk!
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| isn't that amazing!? the website says there's more than 1500 meters of passages that have been explored |
2 comments:
That is weirdly amazing. I never would have guessed. But then limestone caves are pretty common, right?
Right. Although at least some of this rock is chalk, which I guess is related to (if not the same as?) limestone?
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