After the cold weather and snow it is nice to be back to the relative warmth of Arizona. Yesterday after a long drive we landed at Kartchner Caverns State Park about 50 miles east of Tucson, and today we decided to spring for the guided tour of the Caverns. What a treat and worth every penny. In 1974 two amateur cavers from Tucson discovered these limestone caverns by sliding down a small sinkhole and being brave enough to explore skinny crevasses and hundreds of feet of crawling through long dark small chambers until it opened up into many rooms. They named in Xanadu and kept it secret for many years while they worked to find an entity that was willing to protect it. Finally the AZ State Parks system got involved and these caverns were opened to the public in 1999 after a massive $35 million dollar investment in opening entrances to them, engineering walkways and lighting, and putting in systems for air and humidity, and monitoring systems to keep them healthy. We can see why it is expensive to maintain. Now we are not so sorry about missing Carslbad Caverns. No cameras or photos are allowed so these pictures came off the web.
After the cold weather and snow it is nice to be back to the relative warmth of Arizona. Yesterday after a long drive we landed at Kartchner Caverns State Park about 50 miles east of Tucson, and today we decided to spring for the guided tour of the Caverns. What a treat and worth every penny. In 1974 two amateur cavers from Tucson discovered these limestone caverns by sliding down a small sinkhole and being brave enough to explore skinny crevasses and hundreds of feet of crawling through long dark small chambers until it opened up into many rooms. They named in Xanadu and kept it secret for many years while they worked to find an entity that was willing to protect it. Finally the AZ State Parks system got involved and these caverns were opened to the public in 1999 after a massive $35 million dollar investment in opening entrances to them, engineering walkways and lighting, and putting in systems for air and humidity, and monitoring systems to keep them healthy. We can see why it is expensive to maintain. Now we are not so sorry about missing Carslbad Caverns. No cameras or photos are allowed so these pictures came off the web.
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