Travel and Caverns of Sonora

How nice to finally sleep in as long as we wanted to! We did a few little housekeeping chores and then headed over to the office to report that, so far, the electric is working fine – even after unplugging and then plugging in again. Guess we’ll hit the road and see what happens. The really nice news was that they didn’t charge us a penny for the diagnostic work. We spent most of yesterday in shops for a total of $104! That doesn’t happen every day in an RVers world! So, if you’re in San Antonio and need some work done, check out Iron Horse RV Inc.

This is the first time we’ve had a chunk of time and no definite daily plans so we just headed west on I-10.

The wildflowers are probably past their peak, but were still beautiful through the Texas Hill Country. Here is the famous Texas Bluebonnet and the yellow one is called Greenthread.

One picture we didn’t manage to get was in a wooded area where the bluebonnets created a “river” through the trees. It was about 12-20 feet wide and just wound through the trees – absolutely gorgeous! The picture below was farther down the road, but may give you some idea why the Texas Bluebonnets are so famous! The center picture is of an Indian Blanket and the far right is, I believe, an Engelmann Daisy.

While we were at one of the rest stops this afternoon, we decided to turn this part of the trip into a “caving trip” since we’re planning to see Carlsbad Caverns when we get to New Mexico. So, around 4:15, we drove several miles south of the town of Sonora and drove up a hilly gravel road to the Caverns of Sonora. There’s a small RV area here so we settled in and the headed over to do the last cave tour for the day. While we were waiting to start the tour, this peacock showed up. Isn’t that tail amazing?

The cave tour was only the two of us and one other couple who just bought a place on South Padre Island and are headed back to San Juan Island, WA where they spend their summers. Our guide was Steve and he did a great job explaining the various formations in this cave. The tour is close to 2 miles long and takes about 1 3/4 hours. The temps inside are fairly warm and the humidity is 98% – even the handrails were wet! This cave apparently has the most formations of any cave in the U.S. – it was pretty impressive. The “rooms” were more long and narrow and weren’t near as big as the ones in Cave with No Name near Boerne, but they extended much further. Here are some pictures. Do you see the “soda straw” in the first picture?

Here are some more of the “soda straws”.

My favorite formations were the fish tails…

This cave has lots of “popcorn” as you can see in a couple of the following pictures.

More fish tails…

This part was near the end of the tour and is in what is called a “dead” section.

On the way back to the rig, we spotted a guy doing some amazing juggling. Turns out that this young couple is also full-timing! They will be working here at the caverns this summer and we had fun visiting about their trip to Alaska last summer.

Back home for showers and some relaxation. Fun day!