Under Camp Bowie
One of the main streets in Ft. Worth is Camp Bowie.  While Dani and her mom went into Eckard's to get trim for the xmas tree, I ran across the street to check out this tunnel.  I came back to report (giddily!) to Dani that this one was so worth checking out.  Between brunch and dinner on xmas day, we finally made it back here to hit it!  And that's when you know you are a total addict.
You can barely see me at the gaping maw of this monster!

Just barely visible on the horizon is the roof of Eckards (now CVS) across the street.
Here again is evidence that this tunnel was well-trafficked by our four- footed friends.
Just inside is a nice ledge for the graffiti artists.

This is about as far as I made it on my earlier reconnaissance mission last time since I didn't have my boots on.

Ahead (no decent picture, sorry) the tunnel splits into a parallel pair: a wide, corrugated metal tunnel and a circular concrete one.
Just before the tunnel splits is a section of drains from the curb in front of Eckards.  Ironically, had I looked down here I wouldn't have seen the big tunnel and thus would have passed over the whole system. 
Dani is a ways behind in the wider tunnel of the pair.  Somehow this section managed to have a lot of soil run-off as well as a lot of trash, very little of which was present further upstream.
Ahead was one of several sharp turns along this journey. 

I have no idea why, but this may be the single coolest image I have ever seen.
And then the parallel tunnels converged to a single metal one.
This is the single most awesome room I have ever encountered outside of a dream: five separate tunnels in four directions! Oh, Minotaur, where are you?
Two more of the choices.  I went a ways down the one to the left in this pic, but it was not especially interesting.

We went a bit further on the main tunnel in the direction of the one we came in from, but it grew increasingly narrow, so we finally turned back before Dani's parents started to wonder where we had run off to.
Since we came in on the one on the right, this time we did the smaller one to the left.
Another sharp turn on our way back. 
Funny story: We exited out of the canal right next to a 7-11 convenience store.  As we're walking out in rubber boots, flashlights in hand, brushing cobwebs our of our hair, I look up and see three cop cars sitting there in the parking lot less than 30 feet away!  I was too tired to care, so I didn't even register it.  I'm sure they wondered what was up because they pulled around into the shopping center parking lot behind the 7-11 where we were heading (that's where the car was parked) and took a close look, probably running a check on my plates.  But we played it cool, taking our time changing out of our boots into tennis shoes and even digging in the trunk for a minute.  Then we drove off and they stayed.  Maybe we were just lucky or maybe it takes a lot to give a cop a reason to have to fill out a report on what he did on xmas when he doesn't want to be working!
Alexplored 12/25/03.
Back to the Index