Post by Tonyterner on Jul 14, 2009 13:57:02 GMT -5
I took off the latter part of last week and my daughter and I headed out to Luray Caverns in Virgina. I had been there once before but that was 25 years ago, way before I was into rocks. It was more impressive than I remembered and has to have some of the best examples of flowstone in the eastern U.S. All the formations are formed by rainwater leaching calcium out of the surrounding limestone and depositing it in the cavern as calcite. The calcite is either white, red to orange if colored by iron and grey to black if colored by manganese. The lighting in the caverns is pretty good for taking pictures but mine would have been better had I brought a tripod.
These are just some random pictures of the formations. Between Autumn and I we took about 100 photos.
This is a close-up of the last shot showing the color bands in the rock.
This is one of the highlights of the cavern. Its a small pool that perfect reflects the ceiling. The photo doesn't come close to showing how beautiful this is.
This formation is about 25 feet tall. The tallest in the caverns is 65 feet.
This formation is called a drapery. The calcite is pretty thin and forms in waves like a hanging drape.
Here's a close-up showing the translucency of the calcite drape.
This is a pic of one of the mechanisms for the Great Stalacpipe Organ. There are 100's of hammers attached to stalactites throughout the cave that are attached to a keyboard. Every 5 minutes the organ plays a tune. This one must have been a bit off key since it got trimmed.
A funny little formation called the fried eggs.
This area has 4 or 5 different caverns so we are hoping to get back again to visit some of the others. I also plan on taking Amber down there sometime since she has never seen that area. We drove part of the Skyline Drive as well but I'll put those in another thread.
These are just some random pictures of the formations. Between Autumn and I we took about 100 photos.
This is a close-up of the last shot showing the color bands in the rock.
This is one of the highlights of the cavern. Its a small pool that perfect reflects the ceiling. The photo doesn't come close to showing how beautiful this is.
This formation is about 25 feet tall. The tallest in the caverns is 65 feet.
This formation is called a drapery. The calcite is pretty thin and forms in waves like a hanging drape.
Here's a close-up showing the translucency of the calcite drape.
This is a pic of one of the mechanisms for the Great Stalacpipe Organ. There are 100's of hammers attached to stalactites throughout the cave that are attached to a keyboard. Every 5 minutes the organ plays a tune. This one must have been a bit off key since it got trimmed.
A funny little formation called the fried eggs.
This area has 4 or 5 different caverns so we are hoping to get back again to visit some of the others. I also plan on taking Amber down there sometime since she has never seen that area. We drove part of the Skyline Drive as well but I'll put those in another thread.