Rob & Yvonne's Az Living: Spelunking

There are so many interesting things to see and do at the southern end of Arizona. Lately, we've been to the Biosphere near Florence and the Pima Air and Space Museum near Tucson. Today was Sandi's "Foursday" turn and her decision to take us underground to explore some ancient caverns south of Tucson was an excellent choice. The two and a half hour drive started early in the morning and we drove all the way to Benson before we even had a cup of coffee.

Today the Kartchner Caverns are a state owned attraction but when they were first discovered by Gary Tenen and Randy Tufts in 1974 the caverns were virtually unknown to humankind. Aside from a few animal skeletons the discoverers found absolutely no evidence of past human presence inside the 200,000 year old caverns. They kept the caverns a secret from the public until 1988 when they, along with the Kartchner family, who were the landowners, approached the State Governor with a plan to preserve and protect their discovery from public vandalism. After seeing the spectacular finding for himself the Governor started the process to acquire and develop the site as a state park and show cavern.

The two caverns were imaginatively named the Big Room (left) and the Throne Room (right). What you don't see in this drawing is the long and thin tunnel that the discoverers first used in their quest to find a larger underground space. Their entrance was very small, no bigger in diameter than a basketball and they spent a lot of time crawling on their bellies. Today there is a much larger entrance complete with stainless steel doors, paved walkways and several air locks to prevent air from channeling out and possibly drying out the caverns. Nowadays the original entrance is only used by 1000 or so cave bats that use the space to hang out and raise their young.

The combined caverns are approximately 7 acres in size and the Park Rangers do a very thorough job keeping the caverns in pristine condition. To ensure that nothing new is introduced into this confined space everybody is misted down with water as they enter the tunnel. Apparently the mist minimizes the amount of clothing lint and loose skin cells that might fall from visitors as they move along the 2.5 miles of pathways.

We visited the Big Room on this trip and plan to see the Throne Room on another day. The caves are closed for the summer because of the cave bats.

I would love to take credit for the pictures that I've posted below but all have been downloaded from various internet sites. These caves are dimly lit and your eyes gradually become dilated due to the low light. Apparently some overly sensitive people do not appreciate the unexpected flashes from cameras so, for purely selfish reasons, picture taking is not allowed inside the caverns. We were also warned against taking souvenirs. What happens in the cavern stays in the cavern.