The Big Room

We did the second cavern tour today. It is called “The Big Room” tour because it is the biggest of the 3 rooms you can tour. The first was the Rotunda/Throne room tour. They are 2 completely different types of tours. The big room covers a lot of different formations and is the only room that the bats return to every year. This was evident by the piles of bat guano (poop) in some areas of the cavern. They call this a time share cavern because they close the cavern to tours during the time the bats return each year. The Rotunda/Throne room has a pile of bat guano also but it is estimated to be around 45,000 years old. They say that with the ecosystem inside the cavern that the pile is still soft, I’ll take their word on that. The Rotunda/Throne room tour doesn’t have as many formations to see however the ones you do see, I believe are more magnificent than the Big Room. Especially the one they named Kubla Khan. Kubla Khan is a Stalagmite/Stalactite column that is 58 feet tall. As I mentioned before, these are Living Caverns. Most of the formations are still growing however you won’t see them grow, and if you come back a few years from now they won’t appear any larger because they grow at the rate of 1/64 of an inch a year. You can imagine (or maybe not) how long it took to form Kubla Khan. If you only have time to do one tour I would choose the Rotunda/Throne tour. If you do both, do the Big Room first. Kubla Khan is the last thing on the Rotunda/Throne room tour and it leaves a lasting impression.