Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Austin Day Trip - Cave Without a Name

Cave Without a Name is worth a day trip from Austin. Just 11 miles west of Boerne, TX, Cave without a Name is just about two hours from the center of Austin. The tour of the cave isn't long, but there are some huge rooms with amazing formations in the cave.

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So the first thing you might be wondering is why it is called Cave Without a Name. At some point after the cave was rediscovered in the 1920s, a contest was held to name the cave. As the story goes, a young boy said that the cave was too beautiful to name, so the Cave Without a Name was called just that.

Cave

The Cave Without a Name tour entrance is a man-made series of stairs that drop down under the ground about 90 feet. The tour goes through a series of large rooms. There is usually quite a bit of water dripping in the cave, which is why formations are constantly growing. The cave has some magnificent stalactites, stalagmites, columns, flowstone formations, soda straws, cave bacon, draperies and rimstone dams. There is also a helectite that looks remarkably like a chicken's foot pointing up toward the ceiling of the cave.

Not as commercialized as other caves in Central Texas, Cave Without a Name is pretty fun to go through. Tours depart not on a schedule, but when a large enough group forms. If the group is fairly small, the guide will take more time to point out and explain formations. There is a point at the end of the tour where the only way to proceed is in an underground river. The only people allowed past this point are people who have been trained in cave diving.

People can get to Cave Without a Name by taking County Road 474 from Boerne to Kruetzberg Road to Cave Without a Name Road.

Austin Day Trip - Cave Without a Name

Cave

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