About eight of us went on this excursion today. We had reservations at Kartchner Caverns for one of the first tours, which was at 8:15 in the morning. We had to be there half an hour before and it took an hour to get there, so we left the campground around 6:30 in the morning -- ouch!
I've certainly taken enough pictures of western sunsets on this trip, so here is a picture of a western sunrise:
When we got to the caverns, we found out there was a mix-up. We don't know if the mix-up was at their end our our end, but we were scheduled for the 4:30 tour -- another ouch. So, we decided to re-arrange our plans and go to Bisbee and Tombstone first and then come back to the caverns later in the afternoon.
Bisbee is a very small copper mining town. We parked in the first place we could find which we thought was a Visitor's Center and ended up being a tour of the copper mine. They were filled for the next two tours. The next available one was after 2:00, so we decided to scratch the tour and just walked around the mine building and the gift shop. A few of the women are into minerals and gems, so we spent quite a lot of time there.
A cave as seen from the parking lot of the mine tours:
Once done at the mine, we drove up the road a bit to see the actual copper pit mine:
Phenomenal color contrasts of red, green, and blue:
Tombstone was our next stop. There's tons of pictures here. Many buildings and a few people. I watched the reinactment of the Shootout at the OK Corral. Even after seeing it, I am not quite sure what caused the shootout. It was either a fight over land and cattle or the Cowboys, the McLaury and Clanton brothers, were already wanted by the law and when the Earps and Doc Holliday caught up with them, they were shot.
Buildings:
Street Activities:
Another horrid "people picture" taken by Diane:
These are characters in the shootout. You'll see them again below
Shootout at the O.K. Corral
The true historical location with the cast of characters: The Stage:
Sorry about the glare. If you click on the pics, you can see them larger ... MUCH larger. LOL! If I post enough of these signs, maybe I won't have to wrack my brains out trying to figure out why the gunfight happened in the first place.
The Gunfight:
Virgil or Morgan Earp: Doc Holliday -- drunk and spewing sonets:
Left Pic: Wyatt Earp's daughter or granddaughter had the hots for Frank McLaury, one of the bad boys. I guess every story has to have a love interest.
Right Pic: Wyatt Earp on the right, one of his brothers on the left
Left Picture: Now the floozy is flirting (or fighting) with Billy Clanton. She also went off with Doc Holliday at one point.
Right picture: Billy Clanton and his father, Ike.
The Earps having a discussion with Ike: The fight erupts:
Morgan Earp (against Photography studio) is shot: Wyatt inspecting the damage:
Kartchner Caverns:
And, last but not least for the day, Kartchner Caverns. I probably should have broken this day up into three posts, but BlogSpot seems to merge them all together as one big string of posts anyway. We were not allowed to take pictures and it has been nearly two weeks since I've been there. My memory banks may come back to me. For now, I'll just say it was interesting and very different.
The caverns are a fairly new discovery, being discovered by amateur cavers in 1974. Kartchner is considered a living cavern. That means that water still seeps through it creating stalagtites and stalagmites. Just like caves at home, they are formed by limestone. The difference is that our caves have a lot of water -- usually with rivers or lakes in the caverns. The other major difference is the temperature. Eastern caves, like Howe Caverns in New York, normally have a steady temperature of 54 degrees. Kartchner Cavern is 72 degrees or higher with a relative humidity of 99%. It was a rather cool, breezy day and walking into the cavern was like walking into a humid blast furnace.
Along with the typical stalagtites and stalagmites, there were formations called bacon, eggs, soda straws, among others. Bacon was formations that rippled along the ceiling in wide ribbons. They were streaked in colors of white and brown that made them look just like, well ... bacon. Eggs were the towered formations that had a bowl of water on the top.
I don't know if this link will work, but here is a video on YouTube of the caverns put out by the Arizona Parks Department.
Kartchner Caverns
So ends the busiest day of my trip to Arizona.
No comments:
Post a Comment