First the bats, now the cave...

I just got back from spending the day out with everyone. We went to Inner Space caverns, which is a cave in a town north of here called Georgetown. I think Eric and Faisal ended up there a couple years ago, when they decided to hop in the car and head for downtown Austin, but went NORTH on the interstate instead of south. Yeah, north of Austin there’s not much except a lot of grass. And some cows. And eventually Dallas. But Georgetown is where we lived for the year when I was in seventh grade – and that, incidentally, was the last time I’d been to Inner Space.

It’s funny how different our perceptions are when we’re kids. The whole cave seemed so much smaller to me this time. Rooms that I’d remembered as stretching out into infinite darkness actually did, in fact, end at a finite point. And the tour was a bit different than I remembered. The cave is located beneath the interstate, and it was discovered when workers were drilling into the earth (for whatever reason workers drill into the earth when they’re building an interstate). And when I was a kid, my favorite part of the tour was when we got to the large cavern where the very first highway worker had been lowered down into the cave with a flashlight to see what, exactly, was down there. He shone his flashlight around in the total darkness, and the beam hit a large rock formation, casting a shadow onto the wall behind it. At this point in the tour, the guide would cut the lights and shine a flashlight onto the rock formation so we could all see the shadow – it looked like a giant devil, complete with horns on its head. And everyone would laugh to think of that poor highway worker, hanging in a cave in complete darkness, looking at a shadow of a giant devil. Did he drop his flashlight? Did he yell for his comrades to pull him back into the daylight? Was he startled for a moment, but then realized it was a great opportunity to scare some of his friends? When I was a kid, all these scenarios would run through my mind, firing up my imagination…

But today they never mentioned the “devil,” although we did see the big hole that was drilled for the one guy with the flashlight. It sort of made me wonder if that whole “this was the first thing he saw!” monologue was made up for the tourists. It’s still an interesting experience, though. And we did get to spend a few seconds in total darkness. Actually, that’s not true – my dad was wearing a glow-in-the-dark watch. But other than that – total darkness. It was funny, because Nate and Megan were the youngest kids on the tour, and the guide wondered if turning off the lights would scare them at all. But after he turned them off and then turned them back on, both of the kids laughed and said, “do it again!!” Not a couple of wimps, those two. (Eric, however, screamed like a little girl. But Nate took his hand and calmed him down, so it was all good…)

To get down into the cave, you have to walk through the gift shop (of course) and then outside to a little tram that carries you about two hundred feet down a slope. Which at first seems sort of cool – oooo, it’s a little train ride down into the scary cave! But after walking all through the cave and then all the way back, it seemed sort of silly to stop and board the tram so we could be CARRIED the last two hundred feet into the daylight. We’d just walked all over that cave – you think we couldn’t have handled the last couple hundred feet? I mean, you could SEE the gift shop from the mouth of the cave – it literally would’ve been faster to simply walk up the slope. Maybe it’s supposed to add to the effect – like everyone can pretend to be a prospector going spelunking. You can’t just walk right in and right back out – you have to travel in and out on your rickety old prospector’s tram.

Last time Eric and Faisal were at Inner Space, Eric brought me back a geode – which I promptly took out to the street and smashed with a hammer. I have the pieces sitting on a bookshelf in my living room, and every time I see it, I think of some guy shining a light on a rock formation that looks like a devil. Well, that and Eric’s fear of the dark…