A Sunday Jaunt--inside a Mountain

Got a real flea in my ear--- quite rightly-- when I hinted that we should get our stuff and go sit beside the pool at the hotel. Well , I just thought that we were gonna relax. The proposal was that we should do something in the late morning early afternoon and THEN lay beside the pool.

OK, go the message---so we trawled through local brochures and decided to go to Colossal Caves, in the mountain around Tucson.

 

I don't intend to put loads of cave photos on here , just one or two select ones but will put all of our cave photo's onto the Full Profile as a group.

I am not sure how others feel about going into caves--personally , I have always been fascinated by them and providing you have the appropriate gear with you---lighting being the most important--and water, --then the marvels of what has happened over millenniums to the rock formation and in producing the marvellous stalactites and stalagmites and of course you cannot have a set of caves without a story.

 

We are told that in the period around 1880, there was a gold robbery by 4 men who went and hid in these caves. The sheriff sat guard to wait them out outside the entrance without realising there was another exit.

The robbers were celebrating in the town when the Sherriff caught them--killing 3 and capturing 1. The one he caught would not tell where the gold was and got 18 years. at the end it is said that at some time he went back and recovered the gold, and I guess lived happily ever after.

 

These caves have been a tourist spot since the early 1900's and put into proper care when Frank Schmitt took over and he had the only local hotel so worked the 2 together.

 

 The above is the routes that the tour takes, about 350 steps as well as ramps etc.

 The photos do not do it real justice, but we hope you can get the flavour

 

This is three clock checking station that the guys monitor daily--temperature would be around 70 degrees at all times, they check Humidity at around 50 %  and-------B--ger, I forgot the third one---oh I think it is any vibration.

 

It was a really interesting couple of 3 hours, albeit with a tour guide that is in between school classes and who needs to do a bit more studying on the place but we will forgive him for his age.

 

So that was yesterday---we came back to the hotel for around 3pm and even though it was around 100+ degrees the clouds came over--there are a few storms around this week--hope that they don't spook the horses.

 

Breakfast done so time to get finger out--- :-)