The Biggest Cave in Minnesota

 Spring Valley, MN

Posing with Bat Art and our tickets.

Mystery Cave State Park

Today we drove south through Mower County among others, and into Fillmore County to visit Mystery Cave State Park.  Apparently it was named by workers clearing the cave of debris.  One was heard saying, "Why anyone would work in this cave is a mystery to me."  That isn't a great story but I didn't make it up so don't shoot the messenger.

Why anyone would want to visit this cave isn't a mystery.  It's awesome!  There are a few different tours you can choose (you have to pre-book) so we chose a 1 hour tour that runs on weekdays.  The tour started at the Visitor's Center.  

The cave is all locked up tight.  It's a 13 mile maze so you need a guide.

It's an active cave so the formations are still growing due to the dripping water leaving deposits.

It's a constant 47ish degrees so jackets are needed year round.  I hear 47 degrees is warm in the winter.

The formations are surreal.  They remind me of working Big Thunder Mountain.  They also remind me of...

This is the Turquoise Lake at the end of the tour.  It's man made.  It was a river but the original "Owner" dammed up the area to make a pool of water.

The Visitor's Center has a gift shop with some cool merch.

Thank You My Try Cave!  More like My Didn't Try very hard.

This is also a pretty crappy depiction of the cave.  I should send them some of my photos.  They aren't great but they are better than these.

There is also a pay phone outside.  I guess it's still here because cell service is bad.

On the way home we stopped in Rochester, MN to get ice cream at Flapdoodles.  The ice cream was great and it wasn't very expensive.  We will be stopping here again but getting the child's size next time.

It's very popular

That's it for today.  If you missed, Another County Fair, check it out.  It was practice for our upcoming State Fair visit.

Longhorn Caverns State Park Cave Tour

 Burnet, TX

The Ranger / Tour Guide Took our photo here

My First Cave

Today we went to Longhorn Caverns State Park.  Burnet TX is about an hour west of Austin.  The drive got us 2 new counties.  Donna and I wanted to visit one of the many caves in the area and chose one associated with a Texas State Park.  The tour was about $25 each and totally worth it.  We booked a noon tour and there were 5 of us including the ranger.  It was great to be able to have an intimate tour and I feel like we learned and saw a lot more than we would have in a larger group.  They run tours every hour and they last an hour and a half so we ended up passing 2 tour groups, one on our way in and one on our way out, and they were both much larger than our group.  

Heading to the CCC built building which was also the start of the tour.

The cave entrance is at the bottom of a sink hole.  Everyone can go into the sink hole but you have to pay for the tour to enter the cave.

The guide had a backlight and used it a lot to show Calcium Carbonate which showed that water was still dissolving rock and creating formations.

Quartzite Crystals in the Cave

Bats were in the cave.  These were Tri-colored bats and they are solitary.  They are here year round and semi hibernate the few times it gets really cold.

At some point the cave was used as a night club.  This was where the stage was

The cave was also set up as a fallout shelter during the cold war

Different layers of rocks.  The brown rock is chert.

When debris blocked the flow of water through the cave system the water found easier paths.  Sometimes those paths were above the debris so "Attics" were formed.

There was one section with 60 feet of 3ish ft. clearance.  We had to walk carefully.

The Ranger held a laser up to the Quartzite and showed how it diffused light and reflected it back.

After the tour we visited the CCC built observation tower.

It was a great drive and the state park was really cool.  Totally worth the entry fee.  If you missed yesterday's post you can find it here.