Post 15 Kartchner Caverns, Gila Cliff Dwellings and White Sands National Park

Nov 2-10

From Tucson we made the trip to Benson, Home of Kartchner Caverns State Park. Our original plan was to go to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, but it was closed due to the government shut-down. Our friends had been to Kartchner and highly suggested we check it out.

We checked out our campsite in the state park (great) and drove over to the visitor center for our reserved afternoon tour of the caverns.

The caverns were discovered in 1974 by two 20-something cave explorers. At that time, they were only using head lamps for light. They could only see about 6 feet ahead. Even with their limited vision, they knew they had found a cave like no other. In order to protect it, they kept the location of the cave a secret for 4 years then they finally told the property owners. Fortunately, the family members understood the importance of protecting the cave. It was eventually decided to partner with the state to develop a state park focused around the caverns. The then governor, Greg Babbitt, was a trained geologist and heavily supported the effort.

After 10 years of legislation, fund raising and construction, the first cavern, The Throne Room, was finally opened to the public in 1988.

We toured the second cavern to be opened, The Big Room, which is only available for tours from October-April because of the large summer nursery of Cave Myotis bats located within the Big Room. The Karchner caves are wet caves, which means they are still growing. The cave was stunning! We could often hear drip, drip, dripping, the colors are fantastically beautiful and the formations were beyond what we had ever seen. The pathways were well lit and wheelchair accessible, too. Our ranger guide, Chan, had only a few tours under her belt, but did a great job with our tour. We could tell she really enjoyed learning as much about the caves as she could and passing that information along to us with her own down-to-earth descriptions and humor. Thanks, Chan!

The next day we drove south towards the Mexican border to the towns of Tombstone and Bisbee.

Tombstone - home to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and the Gunfight at the OK Corral. The main street is still set up to look like it was back when the Earp brothers were around. Cowboys still do re-enactments of the gunfight and the streets (and cowboys) have often been used in Western movies. We took a trolley tour to learn some of the history of the town. Like many towns in this part of the country, it started with a mine. In Tombstone, it was a silver mine. They still run tours there. We stopped for a cold beer at the Tombstone Brewing Company and then made our way further south to Bisbee.

Today Bisbee is a thriving artsy type town, but it also started with mining. They have an interesting mining museum showing the history of copper mining in the town. As they were mining for the copper, they discovered that the land around Bisbee also contained many precious gems. The Smithsonian has a beautiful display of gems and minerals on the second floor of the museum. A stop at the brewery to chat with the locals finished our day of mining towns in the wild west.

Before moving on from Benson, we returned to the Karchner State Park Visitor Center to watch the movie and check out the displays. We had arrived in the afternoon on our first day and didn’t have time after our cave tour. They did a great job of explaining how the cavern was formed. Even more interesting was the exhibit on how they prepared the cave for visitors- documenting cave conditions, building walkways, running electricity- all while trying to do as little damage as possible to the cave. Even today there are instruments in the cave monitoring temperature and humidity.

We went to the car to travel to our next destination, Silver City, NM. Where are the car keys??? Oh, there they are on the seat of the car!! Damn! A call to AAA and an hour later, Rusty from New Zealand came to our rescue, opened our car and sent us on our way. Phew!

We made a stop at Silver City on the recommendation of Anne’s son, Jeff. He raved about the cliff dwellings and we decided to check them out.

We made the 30-mile, 1.5 hour trek along winding mountain roads (with NO yellow line) out to the Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument not knowing whether they were open or not. We found most of the National Parks to be open, but the monuments have been a crap shoot. Some open, some not. We were happy when we arrived, that they had just reopened a few days before with one ranger and a crew of volunteers.

Having vacationed often in Arizona, we’ve seen many cliff dwellings. These were above and beyond anything we’d seen before. The hike up to the dwellings took about 30 minutes and we were well rewarded. The rooms were large and you were allowed to walk through many of them. You could almost feel the spirits of the people that once lived there.

Our last stop for the week was Las Cruses, NM. We stayed at, what we would consider, a glamping campground. It was just another KOA, but the stonework and location were beautiful. It was set upon a hill overlooking the whole city of Las Cruses. They even built a community fire circle at the edge of the property to sit and enjoy the city view and glowing sunsets. Bonus points to them – it was ALL decorated for Christmas…!

Along the highway, close to our campground, there was a cool roadrunner sculpture made of all recycled components. Zoom in and see what you can find! Sneakers, keyboards, crutches, skis...

We took a daytrip to White Sands National Park -another sort of other-worldly place. It looks like you’re surrounded by snow. It’s quite windy there and the windblown drifts are plowed – sort of looks like a freshly plowed New England landscape. We even did some sliding down the dunes!! The sand is gypsum, which is very fine and powdery, and cool to the touch. It felt so good hiking over the dunes in bare feet.