Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Tour on the Kartchner Cavern

Kartchner cavern is a stunning limestone wet cave in southern AZ boasting with many world class features that have been protected since the cave was discovered in 1974. That is why no pictures allowed on the cave cause on the last years the flashing of cameras ruining the caves surface.Inside the cave we walked along a 1.2 miles on the trail viewing multi-hued stalactites and stalagmites. As we enter on the cave i felt costophobia cause of it's high humidity and i'm afraid i'm gonna pass out cause we enter door by door with limited air and high humidity. You know it's been awhile feeling the high humidity in the Philippines. Our tour begins on an electric tram that runs from the Discovery Center to the entrance of the cave not far from the sinkhole were the discoverer entered the cave in 1974. We entered through a 420 long man made tunnel sealed by series of airtight doors designed to preserved the interior climate, temperatures in high 60's and relative humidity from 97.5% to 100%. The cave is extremely fragile cause exposure to outside air can dry out the cave and terminate it's growth.It's very nice inside and a little cooler than in the entrance area. Everytime we reach a certain place they turn on some lights, they planted electric lights around for the people to see it clearly the beauty inside the cave and they turn it off after we've passed that place cause heat from the light might ruin the original temperature inside the cave. Very nice dainty white helectites, translucent orange they call it a bacon drapes, spectacular soda straw formation, there's a "fried egg" stalagmites and the amazing column they call it Kubla Khan that stands over 58 feet tall.Aside from the amazing discoveries of the cave, they found some evidence of prehistoric life been in the cave including the skeleton of an 80,000 years old Shasta ground Sloth and the cave is also home of about 1,000 female bats.That was a very nice experience and as we went out from the cave i felt some condensation on my body from the humidity that i felt inside to a nice and dry on the outside of the cave.
Well, that was a nice, fun and fascinating weekend get away from a very interesting historical town of Tombstone, our staying a night camping in Benzon KOA camp ground and our amazing tour of the Kartchner Cavern.

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