Over spring break we decided to take a little overnight trip to Tuscon to visit Kartchner Caverns. We headed down on Friday after lunch. We arrived in Tuscon and checked into the hotel. We drove around the city for awhile and finally ended up near the U of A campus. We walked around the campus for a bit and then had dinner at a restaurant called Gentle Ben's Brewery. They had great pizza and wings! We headed back to the hotel to swim and get to bed for our early arrival at the caverns.
Saturday morning we had a tour for 8:00am so we ate breakfast at the hotel and headed out.
This is the mountain that houses the Kartchner caverns underneath.
Unfortunately they do not allow ANY photography inside the caverns. They don't even let you carry anything in. It is extremely well preserved and they do not want anything to be dropped or left behind. To get inside the caves, they have a series of 4 different doors and chambers. They work very hard to keep the humidity levels and lighting as natural as possible so the cave will stay alive and growing.
The caverns were AMAZING! We did a guided tour of the Rotunda and Throne Room and saw the amazing soda straws, "bacon" formations, and the Khubla Khan rock formations. It was absolutely one of the neatest things I have ever seen. Here are some picture I found off the Internet:
After our tour we visited the Discovery Center. Here are some examples of the size of tunnels that the original men went through to find the Caverns.
This is a miniature plastic version of the Khubla Khan formation.
Here are some bones found in the Cavern of an extinct sloth.
We had a great time visiting here and I am so glad we got to see this neat piece of Arizona.
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