Welcome to part two of the first day of my trip! Today we explore the amazing Florida Caverns!

During our guided tour through the Florida Caverns, my dad and I expected to hear that they were the result of “millions of years”. But surprisingly, we didn’t! Not once! The guide said, “A long time ago.” That is true, because that can mean 6,000 years ago. And, I overheard him talking to a couple on the tour and said something to the effect of, “If you believe what the geologists say…” which makes me think that maybe he didn’t believe in what the evolutionists tell him. So that was cool.
These specific caves were discovered by the CCC under FDR’s New Deal program, and the young men who found them nick-named the different “rooms” and rock formations. I’ll include the names that I remember with the pictures I took of them.
I can’t remember this one’s name, but I thought all the stalactites were cool-looking.

This one is the Wedding Room. Can you tell why? Our guide said that a couple did actually get married in there. 🙂


A tunnel that we did not crawl through…

These are perfectly natural stalactites… 🙂 Actually, in between the lights is a dinner plate that the original miners would use to reflect the small amount of light from their lantern into the large room around them. Cool idea, right?

Because of the darkness I was shooting at very low shutter speeds, resulting in lots of blur if I wasn’t careful. I wasn’t careful here, but I like the effect it produced.

Our tour guide actually did have quite a distinctive southern accent to match the hat.

There was one rock formation nick-named “Jabba the Hutt”, and it was either this or another one. I’ll point out the other and you can decide which you think is most appropriate.

This formation and others similar to it are formed of little tiny “micro-pools”. They were very sparkly but I had a hard time capturing that with the settings I was at on my camera.

Dad and I had some fun with the gaps between rooms.

I would insert his picture here, but WordPress’ media library won’t let me. So, sometime later, in another post perhaps.
I thought of the Maze Runner when I saw this one… does anyone agree?

This is the other formation that might have been “Jabba the Hutt”. Which one do think works best?

This was a column, (when a stalagmite and stalactite meet, they’re called a column) but something happened underneath this cavern’s floor and the floor shifted, resulting in a fracture.

These were called “curtains”. Smaller ones are humorously called “cave bacon”. 🙂

These were fuzzy, but not from mold or anything. I should have asked why…

The Winter Wonderland room I believe. Or maybe it was called that at one time but they changed it… I can’t remember.

The red glow is not natural, it is from a spotlight. There was a green one too.

More micro pools.

I tried to capture the water droplets on the stalactites. Our guide said that the water was actually very clean, and drinkable, so we were free to try and catch some in our mouths. I was more worried about my camera, truthfully, but I did try to catch a drop. I didn’t position myself properly and missed the drop, but Dad got a picture of me attempting it. Let’s see if WordPress will let me upload it… Nope! Oh well, it was cool.

We did see two little bats flying around, and I took a picture of the sign in the museum so I’d remember the name. 🙂 Eastern Pipistrelle Bat.

So that was my experience 63-64 feet underground! Next time you’ll see the lush forests and giant spiders of the Florida Caverns national park!
Squid
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