Kartchner Caverns, AZ

On Saturday, Brian and I went to Kartchner Caverns State Park in Arizona. We have been two other times to the caves, but have never been able to go on the "Big Room" Tour. The "Big Room" is closed for 6 months of the year because a colony of pregnant bats moves in to have babies. In order to keep the caves as natural as possible, they close it down.

The most breathtaking features in the cave is in the "Throne Room" that we didn't see this time. It is an enormous column of flowstone. They have named it Kubla Kahn. If you look at the picture below, You can see a man standing at the bottom of the 58 foot high column. Definitely a sight to see.

This flowstone is surrounded by stalactites, stalagmites, & soda straws. This is more like the formations that we saw this time.

The "cave bacon" draperies are also amazing in the caves. Some of them are 50+ feet long. They have beautiful colors, and you quickly realize why the call it "bacon". It was amazing to think how it is formed, and how many million years and droplets of water created it.

Mineral-rich water dripping from a high ceiling splatters in a wide pattern, forming a flattened, "fried egg" stalagmite.

As stated by one of the discoverers of the cave, "The quality and diversity of the formations in the cave are unusual. There's a little bit of everything in there, including a 50-foot-high column, a 30-foot-high stalagmite, and some rare formations called shields." There's also a 21-foot-long, 2-inch-diameter soda straw hanging from the ceiling of the Throne Room, which, until a slightly longer one was found in Australia, was the longest formation of this type in the world."

Kartchner Caverns, is for me, one of the most beautiful places on earth (or in the earth). It reminds me that God's hand created all that is on this earth, and that he put amazing things here for us to remember his hand in all things.

To see the history of the cave, click here.