We stumbled upon a cave when we were headed to Shenandoah National Park. Not in the sense that we discovered some natural wonder on our own while hiking and scavenging the Earth. More in the sense that we saw a sign advertising a cave tour and we decided to partake.
It is hard to believe these formations were discovered below our earth... they are amazingly beautiful!
This cave, Skyline Caverns, was the first to discover a new type of cave formation - a needle like (spiky) formation. It was the only cave to have this known type of formation for quite some time, so the geologist that found it was allowed to name it. He gave them the name ANTHODITES (meaning flower).
They have since been discovered in only 7 other caves around the world. We learned that it takes approximately 7,000 years to grow one cubic inch, as opposed to 125 years for a common stalagmite to grow the same distance. So they are slow growing and rare, which made it cool to see.
We were all pleasantly surprised by the tour and the cave and really enjoyed ourselves.
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