The Tuckaleechee Cavern was discovered by 6 and 8 year old brothers almost 100 years ago. They kept the caves a secret through their teen years, then went off…
The government has seismic monitors installed deep in the caverns. It's evidentaly a cost effective way for them to install equipment where it can still be…
Tuckaleechee is a huge cavern system. The tour lasts 1 hour 20 minutes and explores less than 1% of the cavern!
A "drapery" formation.
The "bear" formation.
There are actually small plants growing in the cave. The spores are brought in on visitor's clothes, and then the plants grow where there's lights. Hopefully…
Some impressive columns.
The formations may not be as elaborate as some other, more well known, caverns. But it's a huge cavern system, the biggest I have been in so far.
The "Big Room". Over 400ft long, 300ft wide, and 150ft deep. It's pretty impressive. It's really hard to get a sense of scale, the distances are very deceiving.
Those stalagmites at the top look pretty small, but they're actually over 25 feet tall!
More Big Room formations.
The "palette" formation. It's partially detached from the ceiling.
Moving on in the tour, we walk along the underground stream. It's a good size stream.
If you look closely towards the center of the picture, you can see a small, lobster looking creature in the water. They are actually a native species living…
It's cool to see this much water underground, and there are actually small cascades in places.
Visitors can stop and drink from the springs or even fill their water bottles. It's evidently ultra pure water.
The wishing well. Water drips from somewhere high up above into this little pool. They use it to take donations for local charities.
Soon we arrive at the waterfall, the grand finale of the tour.
It's a 210 foot high, two tier waterfall. Tallest underground waterfall in the Eastern US.
You can mostly just see the lower tier of the falls as the upper tier is in the cavern above.