Vacation Photo Log 2026 - Texas Hill Country Edition - Chapter Three: Natural Bridge Caverns

Last summer, my wife and I spent 10 days at the Grand Canyon, specifically Star Party 2025. This year we decided to stay a little closer to home and rented a tiny house South of Austin as our base of operations to further explore the Texas Hill Country.

To beat the heat (kind of, more on that later!), and to challenge my photography skills, we headed over to Natural Bridge Caverns, the largest commercial cavern system in Texas. It has been open for tours since its opening July 3rd 1964. The 75 minute guided walking tour route covers 3/4 of a mile and descends to 185' at its deepest point. It keeps a constant temperature of 70 degrees F, but it feels like 85 degrees F due to the constant 99% humidity! Shorts weather, but still cooler than the 95 degrees F at the surface.

Challenge one for photography: if your camera and lenses have been riding around in a dry, cool car all day, they will fog when they hit the high humidity. So, I brought my lens cloth. Second, they allow flash photography and my bulky 14mm Rokinon (my fave for low-light/astronomical photography) creates a huge flash shadow under it, so I have to leave that lens behind. I also push my ISO to 1600, so that maybe I can get some shots with and without the flash. OK, here we go...

The natural bridge, underneath this is the entrance to Natural Bridge Caverns (Nikon Series E 28mm):


This formation is called Sherwood Forest, with flash (Nikon Series E 28mm):


Two shots of the Fairy Castles, with flash (Nikon Series E 28mm):




A shot of the Castle of the White Giants, with flash (Nikon Series E 28mm):


Below that, here is a picture of Emerald Lake. Water was low that day, you can see average water marks on the wall. According to Colton, our guide, it takes about an hour of hard rain to start seeing the water level rise in the caves and it never gets deep enough to close tours (so far!). This is the deepest part of the tour at 185', looking down to 205'. With flash (Nikon Series E 28mm):


Past that, beginning to climb, we enter the Hall of the Mountain Kings (can you tell these were college students that discovered the caves?). Using their lighting (Nikon Series E 28mm):






The Hall of the Mountain Kings was the last one on the tour before we exited, so one last picture, with flash (Nikon Series E 28mm):


Very fun, rocks, and I did not need to wipe condensation off my lenses. I guess the 15 minutes we waited to start in a outdoor (covered) area did the trick! They offer "crawling tours" to more remote parts of the caves, but that is a hard "no" for me!