Hill Country Day Trip

We usually decide the night before it happens to take a day trip the next day. There's plenty of time to through a picnic lunch together, grab the sun hats, and clear the camera cards. This time (7.21.14) we decided to go back to Longhorn Caverns State Park and take a tour of the cave.

While we waited for our tour to start we ran down a path that led away from the building, just for something to do and to release the boys' pent up energy from the car ride....

Ready for the tour.

The cave is not the best place for taking pictures, but we tried and were able to at least document the experience. We got luck on the first tour out on a Monday morning. There was only two other small families in our group. 

This was a crystal room.

There's so much history surrounding that park that it would be difficult for me to cover here without a good deal of research and time. In my efforts to trek onward and bring our blog into current times, I'll just refer you to the experts and my post from a previous visit.

On our way out of the park we decided to swing in to the Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery  to see if anything had changed since the last time we were there. 

Our timing was perfect, as we were milling around one of the buildings...

...we found out they were preparing to transfer the fish from one of the stock tanks (which apparently does not happen very often).

It was a cool process where the man in the yellow hat (below) starts at one end of the tank and uses that wooden framed screen to push all of the fish to the end.

Then they lower a bucket down into the water and load it up with fish...

Then drain it out and lift it up to this guy...

... who dumps them into the Regional Distribution Unit (RDU), which is a big truck with three 650 tanks on the back end to transport fish.

In case you are having trouble visualizing this and need more, you're in luck, we've taken a video... :)...