Robot Claw

Today, we went here:

It’s a natural limestone cave located adjacent to another (much more famous) attraction called Howe Caverns. We’d been to Howe a couple of times over the years, and it was time to visit the quirky neighbour!

As you can tell from the sign, the emphasis is on quirkiness. Here’s the main building:

The interior is full of ancient souvenirs, bizarro attractions and weird ‘hippy’ paintings. For instance, this is a mummy found in the cave:

And the accompanying story of the mummy:

Even the bathrooms are unusual:

The caves were opened in 1930 by an engineer who used to work at Howe caverns and wanted a cave of his own. Initially, tourists descended the more than 100 feet to the bottom by rope (!), but now they have stairs.

Here’s the above ground entrance:

Which covers stairs leading down:

The cave is wet and cold (50F) and runs in a more or less straight line for about 200 meters. Initially, the path is narrow and a bit like a tunnel:

But quickly becomes more natural including obstructions:

And a lot of water:

Until it ends at the star attraction, a 100 foot underground waterfall:

The flow rate is high, and the river continues out of the cave along a passage that would be navigable (but is closed off) that – after another fall – apparently runs out of a mountain into a large creek.

There are rumours the waterfall itself is ‘assisted’ by a pump, but our guide denied this 🙂

Note the hippy lighting on the falls. It played tricks on the eye, as you can see since I look tubby in the photo above 😉

Back on the surface, after punishment for some crime I’m sure I committed:

I had to spend a moment on another attraction in the gift house. That would be the one on the right:

Omg, Sky Shark! I used to be able to beat this on one man, but here I was only able to double the existing high score, which I soon learned had been set by an employee and was considered unbeatable 🙂

All in all, a great place to visit. If any of you are in Albany again, I may have to take you!