Lewis and Clark Caverns in 3D
OK, I’ll admit this is a fairly lightweight blog post. I’ve been on vacation with my family for the past week, and spent the previous three weeks cramming in five Skeptoid episodes. Lightweight, yes, but still very cool.
One stop on our tour was the Lewis and Clark Caverns in Montana. It’s a limestone cavern of great galleries filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and was discovered at the end of the nineteenth century by two hunters who observed steam emanating near the top of a peak. A local businessman, Dan Morrison, opened about a mile of the caverns for tours a few years later. He built an insane 2000-step spiral staircase and encouraged the breaking off and carrying away of samples. Consequently, the cave is in pretty bad shape. However, it’s still an impressive sight. It’s now a Montana state park, and there is lighting and concrete pathways throughout. Its sights rival most publicly accessible limestone caverns.
Our tour was fairly fast-paced so I only stopped for a few 3D pictures, and here they are for your enjoyment. Click on them to see them full size. These are the cross-eyed type of 3D photos; cross your eyes in front of the picture so your left eye sees the right image and your right eye sees the left image. I know many people prefer the reverse, but these are what work for me so these are what I took. Apologies to those for whom they’re not optimal.
The lighting in the cave is all white, so the color in these pictures is due to a combination of the minerals in the rocks, the color temperature of the “white” lightning, my iPhone camera’s white balance, and the difference between its LED flash and the cave’s incandescent bulbs.
Help–my eyes stuck! Mom was right!
I love the pictures, as I really like caving.
If you are able to, I strongly recommend going caving with a local grotto (they will have the equipment and knowledge necessary for a safe trip). It’s a lot of fun and is an entirely different experience being in a pitch black area. I hate to sound (er, “read” I guess unless this is being dictated to you) like an advertisement, but I want others to share in the experiences I’ve had while caving. For a list of local grottoes near you, you can go to the National Speleological Society website at http://www.caves.org/
I wonder if they said anything about White Nose Syndrome, which has been affecting bats in caves all along the Appalachian mountains. It hasn’t spread as far west as Montana, but it is a new disease (discovered within the last couple of years) that scientists have not yet been able to find a cure for. You can find out more on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service website at http://www.fws.gov/whitenosesyndrome/
The guide did mention this, but said the species of bats in this cave is not one of those affected by it. However they do still take measures to guard against it; sorry I don’t recall what these measures are.
It’s sad to see Brian shilling for big Cavern.
Don’t be duped by the Cavern hoax. It was obviously all done in a studio.
Where are the bats, bears or caveman drawings?
He’s shilling for big Ophthalmology, too! I looked at these until I went cross-eyed, saw UFO’s and the Chupacabra. Now I need an eye doctor.
Seriously, nice photos, but my eyes just won’t do the cross-eyed thing. Maybe I haven’t read enough porn in my day…
Great photos. They aren’t reversed like the old stereoscope cards.