The adventure for today consisted of checking out some caves in the Blue Mountains. We took our time driving so we could enjoy the scenry. It was a nice drive till we got to the actual park where it turned into what seemed a one way road. There was nothing more nerve racking than driving on the opposite side of the road with a steep drop off on one side and the chance of crumbling rock on the other. Watching Nat, Kate, my mom, Nick get nervous was funny.
I'm telling you waterfalls are abudant in Australia.
The entrance to the caves ran along a small pond. You could walk to where they artifically dammed it up. The reason for the blue water was from all the minerals from the caves running into the underground streams which all converged to this area.
Magnify this picture!!!! This is a wild platypus!!!! It was living in the mineral pond!
Dad, Mom, Kate, Nick, and I decided to go on a tour of the inner caves. There were a rediculous amount of different caves and a number of tours. The first cave was the largest of the three we got to see. That center pillar is called the Pillar of Hercules. The first room was called Persia, the second Egypt, and the third India. The name of the tour was something like Orient or something in honor of a star constellation.
This is my parents standing with "Egypt" behind them. This is the second cave site.
A family photo on the way down to the India cave site.
Here is a close up of some weird mineral formations. Nicknamed coral. The reason the caves were given these names is because early cave explorers did not want to get lost so they named things to help get them back out of the caves.
After lunch Nick, Kate, Ally, my mom, and I did a self guided tour of a large open cave. Can you see the head that Nick is looking at? It's a profile.
My family brought a lot of luck with them. We saw two things in the wild that I had never seen in my four months there without them: The lyrebird and the platypus. Now we had the good fortune of watching an echidna cross the road in front of us. I didn't get a great picture but I got proof that we saw it.
After the Jenolan Caves we drove back to Wentworth Falls for the sunset. The sun truly brings out the beautiful colors of the mountains.
This was one lookout that led down to the Falls.
From there we could see this cascading awesome waterfall. If you enlarge it you can see a pathway over it.
This was the start of the rapids leading up to the big waterfall.
And this is the break in the rapids before heading over the falls behind me.
No comments:
Post a Comment