Here the remainder of the 4-hour tour will be spent. The trail around the perimeter of the room is one and a quarter miles and, although many sections and alcoves are actually under one huge roof, the visitor usually feels he is in a series of separate chambers. One reason is that the big room is shaped roughly in the form of a cross, the length of the "staff" measuring some 2,000 feet while the "cross-arm" is slightly over half that length. 2,000 feet is almost 4/10 of a mile! Two hours is not enough to see everything the big room has to offer. Many small formations are not seen but must be discovered. Every visitor sees something new--something no one else within the party has noticed, for the formations are countless and the resemblances they offer are equally as numerous. The elaborate indirect lighting system has been designed to reveal the largest, most beautiful and ornate of the spectacles to be seen, but a flashlight aimed in a dark corner is likely to reveal formations resembling a Mermaid, Frog on a Toadstool, Queen's Necklace, Weeping Willow Trees, the Petrified Forest, and countless others, limited only by man's imagination and his ability to seek them out. But the larger formations which have contributed to the fame of the Big Room include Giant Dome, Hall of Giants, Rock of Ages, and the Temple of the Sun. No two people see quite the same thing when they enter the Big Room. It is so huge and there is so much to greet the eye that at first everything is taken in but no one thing is seen. Then the eye begins to settle on one formation at a time. One of the first is the Hall of Giants, so named for the size of its principal formations; the huge Giant Dome, a massive, light grey stalagmite flecked with tinges of orange, stretching upward some 62 feet above the ground, making it the largest upward growth in the Caverns, and behind it the Twin Domes, similar in structure and formation, though not as high and therefore not as old. As the party continues one listens to the whispered observations of the members. Looks like the inside of a great Cathedral, says one. Oh, no, answers his companion, too eerie and spooky for that! The beauty continues to defy all description. The color in the Big Room, too, is appealing to the eye, no doubt enhanced by the deft use of colored lighting. No, says the guide. Only plain light bulbs are used in the thousands of feet of wire strung throughout the Caverns. Any color you see was put there by Mother Nature herself. [Illustration: © BY ROBERT NYMEYER Temple of the Sun--Big Room] Creeping along the north side of the Big Room the party passes by Fairyland, a group of fantastically shaped stalagmites recalling the fairies from childhood tales as they go about their sprightly tasks.