Last weekend my friend Tim organized an outing to Natural Bridge Caverns, because he had not yet in his life been inside a cave and figured it was time to remedy that. Ian & I hadn’t been to this particular cave system either, so we went along. It’s about an hour and a half south of Austin, so a very easy afternoon trip. It was a fun time, and the cave systems were pretty cool. I’d recommend a trip if you’re in the central Texas area, but do keep in mind the following:

• Tours for these caves sell out FAST on weekends. Not a bad idea to order tickets online beforehand (though you still have to check in at the desk when you get there)
• Weekends are also CROWDED. If we were going to go again, we’d probably go on a weekday if possible.
• Of the two regular walking tours, Hidden Passages is much better. For the Discovery tour, it was just too big a group and at least with the guide we had not as good of an experience.
• They do also offer Adventure tours, where you get to explore deeper in the caves and do spelunking and rappelling and a bit more intense of an experience. We might go back and do this.
• They also have a zipline course outside, which we didn’t know about until after our second tour. We would gladly have skipped the Discovery tour and done ziplines instead if we had known.

And now for some pretty cave pictures:
(most of these are taken without flash, as there is some installed lighting in the caves)