Friday, February 29, 2008

Luray Caverns, Virginia

This was last year's trip to Luray Caverns, Virginia after I had recovered the pictures from my crashed laptop.

Upon entering the cavern, the cool and moist air hit you like a blanket. Lights were strategically placed to illuminate the pathway and interesting natural wonders of stalactites, stalagmites and columns. A way to differentiate between stalactites and stalagmites is a stalacTite hangs from the top like capitalized T and a stalagMite has two mounds protruding from the ground like capitalized M.

Other formations looked like two fried eggs or shells, waves at sea, majestic draperies towering down from the cavern roof and 'frozen' waterfall. Besides different formations, there were various colors to the limestone caves where white is the color of pure calcium carbonate, red calcites contained iron, and blue and green calcites have copper minerals.

There was an underground pool in the middle of the tunnel which reflected the hanging stalactites. It had a calming effect on me. At the last part, there was a wishing pond where the coins would be collected at the end of the year and donated to charities.

Due to the dim light condition, I had to use flashlight to capture the spectacular carvings and wonders. My battery was flat by the time I emerged from the caverns.

More Luray Caverns pictures here.

5 comments:

Charles Sng said...

hi, I recalled that another way to differentiate the terms:

StalaCtite: C for Celling

StalaGmite: G for Ground

hohoho :P

Paul said...

I learned something new. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Great pictures! Almost professional quality!

Jim said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jim said...

My Mom taught me this:
the tites go down as the mites go up to differentiate between stalactites and stalagmites.
..