The Underground World!

On Saturday, one of my supervisors (Heather) and I drove the 90 miles or so to Luray Caverns, in Luray Virginia.  It was a cool place!  If you've never been there, it's worth it to go.

 At the entrance to the building to get into the caverns. 

Thanks to Heather for many of the following pictures! 

 The fish scales. The wet and slimy ones mean they are still growing.  

 Look how cool it looks!  It's so otherworldly!

A cool looking column!

 Heather!

 An almost see-through stalactite.

 This was at the lowest point of the caverns which I believe was 16 stories below the ground.  I got lightheaded so far under the ground.

It kind of looks alienish. 

Oooohhhhhh!

Awesomeness!

I loved this part of the caves.  It looks like there are stalactites and stalagmites. Right?!  Of course right, but actually there are only stalactites and the ones on the bottom are a reflection of the stalactites from the water! I was seriously fascinated by this and had to look at it from different angles to realize it was very shallow but clear and still water and the ones below were just reflection.  It was awesome!

Another picture of the reflection. 

I thought this looked like an ear and decided to take a picture of it.

I believe the rest of the pictures are taken by me except the full body picture of me. 

The draperies.  They are very thin and look like draperies, hence the name. 

This is a stalactite that fell down thousands of years ago. Water that used to fill the cave prevented the stalactite from shattering into millions of pieces when it fell. 

I really liked these columns. 

The stalacpipe organ.  They searched 3.5 acres of the cave to make notes from the stalactites. They found 37 notes. Although no one was actually at the organ, they had an automatic song play for us and it was pretty awesome! 

One of the notes from the organ.

The Wishing Well!  Here you could throw coins (or dollar bills, in the case of some people) into the water and make a wish. They clean the coins out once a year (the bills more frequently) and then donate the money to various charities.   The sign has the names of the charities they donate to.

  They get about 2 feet of coins out each year. (This picture is from Heather.)

A self portrait :)

Part of the walk in the caves was a little narrower and lower.

From the beginning of the cave to the end, we walked a 1-1/4 mile.

Fried eggs.  

Me again.

A random memorial of those who died during World War 1, World War 2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War from Page County. 

I really liked the caves! It is so beautiful and otherworldly in the underground!  

 We did more after the caves, but that will have to wait for another post...