9/9/2023 0 Comments Onyx cave cave city ky![]() ![]() The owner gave us a tour and he was fantastic! Knowledgeable, friendly, and patient with some rambunctious kids. Thanks to another review, we knew we could schedule a personal tour even during the off-season, and we are so glad we did! The cave is a relatively short tour in distance, but it was packed full of incredible formations! The kids loved learning about what determines the shape and form of the features, and they were especially invited any time we got to see cave wildlife along the way (which happened a few times). Our family would highly recommend a visit to this cave! We loved it! The owner described some of the work he had done for years before he could open to make the cave accessible for tours and it shows how much he loves the area- the work is lovingly done to preserve and protect the growing cave formations while sharing this lovely gem with the world. There are calcite deposits of various ages throughout the cave so we learned about how they can darken with age and that was confused with onyx when people first started naming the caves in the area. My 8 year old loved the dark experience the most and my 5 year old loved the imagination room. My 10 year old kept taking pictures of the cave formations and she learned so much about the different types since there were so many varieties here and the owner was so knowledgeable about them (we previously knew about stalagmites and stalactites and columns, but we saw and learned about drapery and cave coral and soda straws and so much more!). ![]() Walking past the underground waterfall and on top of the cave lake was such a lovely experience! There were beautiful giant domes to look up at and so many large displays of dripstone! My 2 year old enjoyed hopping up and down many of the stairs and squeezing through the columns on the walk to the wedding cake room. Then the owners gave us a tour of the upper cave and it was so very beautiful!! We took our kids, ages 2-10, and this came tour was everyone’s favorite part of the trip. Fortunately, the light ice on Sunday morning melted quickly and we were able to make it up the hill to Crystal Onyx Cave easily. We were warned that if the roads developed ice, then we wouldn’t be able to make it up the hill to the tour in the morning so it would need to be cancelled. I was able to book a Sunday morning private tour for our family after we arrived in Cave City, KY late on Saturday afternoon. I was searching for a cave with formations for my family to see while we were visiting and Crystal Onyx Cave fell on my radar - boy did they look like a jackpot of formations! But then I saw that they were closed during the winter- however, even though their regular tours are closed for the winter, they still offer private tours! This cave is on the opposite side of the highway exit than Mammoth cave and it is up a relatively steep hill. By the time the Crystal Onyx Cave is discovered by the cool air it issued, the Cave Wars are over so the cave is relatively untouched.Such a lovely place! We were visiting Mammoth Cave in the winter and the only part of Mammoth cave with formations was under construction (they’re doing maintenance on those trails so the Domes and Dripstones Tour won’t be offered until at least the fall of 2023). Many beautiful caves that, to this day, show the scars of cut columns and severed stalactites. Visitors can hardly spend much time in the area without hearing about the Cave Wars, a period in which tour operations would deface rivals caves in order to cut back on the competition for tourist’s ticket money. The Crystal Onyx Cave is a relatively new one, at least as far as tours are concerned. Even so, we certainly can get very close in the course of the tour. Touching these living rock faces could harm their development. The dripping water from the surface travels down and deposits minerals on the formations. This is a living cave and formations continue to grow before our eyes, though imperceptibly. The roots wind around the rock formations. The tour is remarkable not just for the beautiful drapery but fascinating demonstrations of phosphorus in the formations and tree roots dangling from the roof. The tour travels down the property to an enclosed entrance staircase that descends into the cave. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |