Karchner Caverns, Arizona

We headed east from Tucson to Karchner Caverns, just south of Benson Arizona. Karchner is a relatively new state park, and Arizona has knocked it out of the park with this one (sorry ...). Two guided tours are available at this time of year. We toured the Big Room one day, and the Throne Room the next. Both are awesome. Each enters the cave through a series of air locks through a man made tunnel. Concrete paths then take different routes through the two rooms. Spectacular formations in each room are back lit by strategically positioned lights that turn on and off at key moments as the tour passes by. The cave is wet, humidity is 99%, formations are still in process of being built. This cave has not been trashed by early explorers or unconscious party goers. I highly recommend visiting! Note that they close the Big Room when the bats return between April and November, so if you want to tour both rooms you must be there when the bats are not. Reservations are darn near required. Here's their URL: http://azstateparks.com/Parks/KACA/index.html


Cameras are not allowed in the cave, so Joanie took a few in the visitor center ... We had some fun wriggling through some rock openings, viewing "fried eggs" and staring down a replica of a Shasta Ground Sloth, the remains of which were found in the cave.

We celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary at Karchner with a tour of the Throne Room and followed it up with a light meal in the Bat Cafe at the visitor center. Here Joanie models the necklace and ear rings that I bought her for an anniversary gift when we visited Tubac with friends in late January.

We met Phil, an avid bird hunter from Pennsylvania, travelling with his three dogs. They looked to me like German Wire Haired Pointers, but turned out be Cesky Fousaks, which are Bohemian wirehaired pointer hunting dogs from the Czech and Slovak Republics. The dog on the right is mostly griffon, while the other two are mainly Cesky Fousak. The do probably have some German Short Hair Pointers in their background.

Karchner sits fairly high, so we did get some snow one day. Joanie couldn't resist building a short lived snow man.