It was a busy day today! We left the condo about 9:15 this morning and headed to Kartchner Caverns State Park. We had an 11:15 tour reservation for “The Big Room” and needed to check in by 10:45. After a quick stop at the grocery store, we made it with a little time to spare. 
Because of COVID, the tour is now limited to six people and the park ranger. Before our tour began we had an opportunity to look through the museum. While it isn’t a huge museum, it is very well done. Lots of great displays explaining everything you might want to know about caves! Then on to the tour – and what an amazing tour it was!
Lasting an hour and 45 minutes, the time flew by. Our guide, Jackie, did an great job explaining the history of the cave’s discovery in 1974 and the desire to preserve the cave by the men who found the cave. They kept the location secret for four years because they wanted to maintain the integrity of the eco-system within the cave. The cave became part of the state park under Governor Babcock and and opened to visitors in 1999.
She showed us the different types formations in the cave. We did see some “Fried Egg” stalagmites on the tour. We watched one as the drops were coming down every few seconds which forms wider stalagmites. Slower drops make long, thin stalagmites.
The cave also serves as a “maternity ward” for bats so the “Big Room” section of the cave is closed to visitors from early April when the bats arrive to give birth until they leave with their “pups” to migrate south in September or October.
They haven’t found many bones in the cave, but one they did discover was the “Northrotheriops shastensis” (commonly known as the Shasta Ground Sloth). They sloth is prehistoric, typically roaming woody upland areas between 2 million and 10,000 years ago! How or why they are in this cave has scientists guessing. They were thought to be about 600 pounds! This photo showed where they were excavating some of the bones. 
The temperature inside the cave is about 72 degrees year round and there is a series of “airlock” doors to enter the cave which help preserve the humidity levels and keep dust particles out. Cameras, phones, backpacks, purses, etc. are not allowed in the cave to prevent “foreign” objects from falling into the cave or bringing in extra bacteria. As such, the pictures I took were from displays in the museum! It is hard to describe the enormity of the inside of the cave and the different formations!
The “bacon” ribbon formations really did look like bacon!
It was such a great tour. 
If you are in this area I highly recommend you go to the Arizona State Parks website and get a reservation to check it out. Since COVID, they have not had tours in the Throne Room or Rotunda and you do need to make reservations in advance.(Adults were $23 per person.)
After our tour we finished going through the museum before making our way on to Tombstone. It was a beautiful drive! This was the view just south of Kartchner State Park.
As we got closer to Tombstone we crossed a creek. I didn’t see a sign so I don’t know what it was called, but it was pretty.
Crazy as it seems, within 15 minutes, the clouds started rolling in and the winds picked up (even though they were strong at Kartchner) so by the time we arrived, it was almost completely overcast! We bundled up with our winter coats, hats and gloves! The wind were gusting over 25mph and temperatures are in the high 40s. While that isn’t “cold”, it certainly wasn’t warm.
We got tickets to visit the O.K. Corral Museum and see Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil and Morgan Earp fight the McLaurys and Clantons in one of the daily reenactments of the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” in the Tombstone Theater. Yes, it was kind of cheesy, but what the heck, it was only $10 each! The museum buildings had lots of great displays and information about Tombstone in the 1880s.
We really enjoyed seeing C.S. Fly's Photo Gallery. He had several photos of the Apache warrior Geronimo and historic photos of 1880s Tombstone life. After that we watched the 4pm multimedia history of Tombstone from Geronimo's Apaches to modern time which was narrated by actor Vincent Price. It added another aspect to the history.
It was too cold at 4:30 to do much else in town (and most things had already closed), so we headed out of town about four miles where we are camping for the night. There are five or six other RVs parked nearby. The wind is blowing like crazy and rocking our little house on wheels. The temperatures are supposed to drop to about 26 tonight, so we are hunkering down and bundling up!
We will head back to Tombstone to see a few more of the historic buildings including the 1880s museum of Arizona’s oldest newspaper, the Epitaph, which is still published today. After that, it will be on to Chiricahau.
1 comment:
The cave sounds very interesting. We will have to check it out when we both retire.
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