Caving a Recreational Pastime

Nov 10/17  Weather  sunny, 82 low 50.  Not far out of Benson maybe 10 miles is quite a State Park. 

walkways through the caverns

Today we are going to do something that neither one of us is too keen on.  Caving, Potholing, Spelunking.  No not really but that is a recreational pastime that people do.  They look for underground holes, caves, rooms.  Billy and Rosey wait till it is big and we can walk into it.   We are visiting the Kartchner Caverns State Park where we will go underground to see preserved cave bacon, helictites, soda straws, stalactites, stalagmites and brushite moonmilk.  Well if you say so!!!!!  Taking the walk down under with a ranger it will all be explained to us in detail.  Words we never knew....  and the meanings.  All your belongings have to be left in a locker.

soda straws, some 20 feet long

You don't have to worry about feeling claustrophobic the two cave rooms we were in were huge, one was 2/3 the size of a football field.   As you enter into a series of tunnels it is shut off between each area with refrigerator type doors to seal in the humidity and moisture and seal out the everyday bacteria and contaminants.  In the final tunnel before entering the caverns you will actually be misted off and several warnings that you do not touch the rock formations, do not leave your contaminant behind as these speleothems (cave deposits) are still growing~~~~ Wow.

The Big Room

No bags, purses, cell phones, no cameras, no picture taking(all these pics are downloaded from the net) and very little lighting inside but the walkways are excellent and the view is spectacular.  Enjoy Nature at its wildest.  The two cavers who found this rare double cavern crawled in through a sinkhole and with many many trips inside  continued to find more and more over time while keeping it secret for 14 years!  Their fear was how to preserve it.  Their find lives on as an Arizona State Park and very well preserved.

kubla khan

 bacon formations

Not sure how many caves we will visit in the future but definitely feeling glad that we went in to see this display.  Driving up you see the hill not aware that 260 feet below is 50,000 years of limestone cave deposits and its still growing - dripping everywhere extending the formations and creating new ones. 

under that hill are the caverns!!!!  well hidden