…but not very far. Arizona trip map We’re at Kartchner Caverns State Park again.
It’s a good story about how the caverns were discovered. Two cavers were checking out an ordinary sink-hole in 1974 on a cold day in November, when they noticed warm moist air coming from a hole under a ledge. They widened the hole enough to get in and discovered two and a half miles of pristine cave passages. Hoping to protect the cave from vandalism, they kept the location a secret for fourteen years. They worked with the landowner, the Nature Conservancy, and the state of Arizona to get it established as a State Park before the discovery of the cave was made public. Other caverns in other places got discovered and opened to the public, forever changing the underground processes. If you just blast a big door for everyone to walk through, you change the moisture level and dry out the cave, arresting any formation development. Kartchner Caverns is protected. The number of tours is strictly limited and access is through airlocks. It can be studied as a living cave. Here for a night, then on the road again.
It’s a good story about how the caverns were discovered. Two cavers were checking out an ordinary sink-hole in 1974 on a cold day in November, when they noticed warm moist air coming from a hole under a ledge. They widened the hole enough to get in and discovered two and a half miles of pristine cave passages. Hoping to protect the cave from vandalism, they kept the location a secret for fourteen years. They worked with the landowner, the Nature Conservancy, and the state of Arizona to get it established as a State Park before the discovery of the cave was made public. Other caverns in other places got discovered and opened to the public, forever changing the underground processes. If you just blast a big door for everyone to walk through, you change the moisture level and dry out the cave, arresting any formation development. Kartchner Caverns is protected. The number of tours is strictly limited and access is through airlocks. It can be studied as a living cave. Here for a night, then on the road again.