Weekend before the one that just passed me by

It has been a while since I got out of college station. I needed a break and so decided to visit a friend in Austin. I got there friday evening, and we decided to go for a hike in a state park closeby. Deceived by the decent picture of the place in the website, we decided on Bastrop State Park. Needless to say, it turned out to be a total disaster! The best that we got to see was this….


The trail was nothing more than white sand poured along a beaten path. There was nothing inspiring, serene or contempative about the place or the trail. It was, unfortuneately, one of the most disappointing hikes I have been to. The only saving grace was this snap below (and it isnt much, I admit)

Determined to make the weekend worthwhile we decided to go to the Natural Bridge Caverns near San Antonio. It is supposed to be the largest natural underground cave formation in Texas and growing! Going there, I definitely did not regret. We started late and reached the place only by 2 in the afternoon, bought our tickets (yes, it’s not free). I was looking for the natural bridge, but couldnt spot it, atleast I thought I didnt spot it. It was only later that I realized what the ‘natural bridge’ was… it wasnt much, just this:

Once we entered into the caverns, it was nothing like planet earth as I know it. Some of the limestone formations that I saw left me spellbound, speechless and awestruck. You dont need any speacial fx for sci-fi movies, it was all here. It looked unearthly, and creepy. The toughest part was to photograph them. The exposure for some of the shot was as long as 1″!! Ended up a bunch of blurred exposures thanks to motion. Without tripod, it is humanly immpossible to hold the camera still for 1″ :)
I did manage to get a handful of good snaps though.
Here is a photograph that I messed with, to get a decent view of how the chamber really looks.
pillar chamber
The chambers are really HUGE. Quite a few of them were supposed to have been inhabited by the native americans. The limestone columns and the staligtites and staligmites are a sight to behold.
I will leave you with a few pictures of the place to give yo an idea of how bizzaire the formations look…..

drip drip limestone drips make jelly fish
drip drip and pillar reflection
looks like something from another planet

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