2006/02 Southwest USA trip (NM-AZ) - Colossal Cave |
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Wednesday February 8th
We thought we’d take a look at his park we’d ended up in, so we bounced back along the stream bed and went up to the entrance to the Colossal Cave. The cave had been inhabited by the Hohokam Indians hundreds of years ago, and then by 
bandits in the late 1800s, and then it had been looted by collectors before being made a county park. So it isn’t in pristine condition, and many stalactites have been broken off, but it was one of the best cave tours we’ve been on. 
The Civilian Conservation Corps built the trail back the 1930s and they made sure that visitors got to experience everything. The trail winds up and down and through the cave formations and mostly they are only inches from your nose. The cave is not all that “colossal”, but with all its passages it’s big enough to get lost in. Our tour guide was the cave manager as none of his guides had shown up for work that day and he took us to some extra places.
The cave is not active and there is no running water, so it was much warmer than most, a steady 70 degrees, and a little warmer than the outside temperature. One of the lady employees asked me why I was walking around in winter in my beach clothes. Not too many Arizonans wear shorts in February.
We drove across the park to the Posta Quemada ranch to see the museum and to eat some Mexican lunch in the little café in the midst of the cactus garden. A cactus wren and this magnificent cardinal came to visit us, the same bird that we have year round in Minnesota, but with much more vivid colouring and a hairdo that 
was giving him trouble in the wind. As well as the giant agaves in the picture with Sandie, the garden included a few smaller varieties, known affectionately as “shin daggers”.
We had some errands to run and had hoped to come back to this park and camp for another night, but the 
rules limit campers to one night, so we had to look for an alternative. My main errand was to replace one of our batteries and Sandie was looking for a haircut. We drove across town to one of Tucson’s big malls, and I found a Sears and Sandie a Regis hair stylist. On the way there we passed the Davis-Monthan air force base, packed with thousands of old airplanes, all mothballed until needed for a future war. I guess they keep well in the Arizona climate. Locals refer to it as the Boneyard.
Sandie was unhappy with the prices at Regis, and I was unhappy with my battery mission. Our truck was built with an auxiliary battery of the same type as the main battery, OK for starting an engine, but not ideal for the gradual and often complete drain by lights and fans and TV and computer inside a camper. After two years of such abuse, the battery was dying. So I wanted to replace it with a “deep cycle battery”, more suited to that kind of work. Unfortunately, all those batteries are an inch taller and don’t fit under the hood, so I ended up putting in another starting battery and even that wasn’t a simple job.