On Friday we visited the Colossal Cave Park south of Tucson and drove through the Saguaro National Forest. The cave was a real workout. We walked up and down uneven steps through the equivalent of six stories of building but all underground. The rock formations were cool and our guide was excellent. He was an enthusiastic caver in addition to being a guide for Colossal Cave. The cave was also being decorated for the Halloween evening tour – there were skeletons lying around and huge spider webs in unexpected places. It was funny during daylight but I’m sure I would be scared at night doing the tour by candle light!
The cave tour was kind of hard on Dennis because the steps were uneven and there were not always handrails for support. The visitor pathways were built in the 1930s as one of the CCC projects. I knew the CCC had done a lot of construction and planting of trees, but I did not realize that they had built features like this in many parks. There was one “room” in the cave that was used as a chapel for a few weddings when the pathways were built. Cool idea – well actually seventy degrees, the cave’s temperature is steady but not cold because the bare rock cover heats up in the summer.
The Saguaro Forest was so beautiful. The cacti look like they are marching up the hills to take over. We were riding in Tom’s Mini Cooper convertible – the speed limit is 15 mph so we were able to take lots of pictures. We’ll just post a few.
We are now on the way home and have switched from taking scenic byways to taking high speed freeways. We traveled about 500 miles yesterday and were pretty tired. We need to take quick breaks more often. We’ll see how it goes today. One comment on the freeways – I-25 from Las Cruces to Albuquerque is a beautiful road. We drove hundreds of miles through desert on I-10 east, but I-25 in New Mexico runs parallel with the Rio Grande in many places. So, we saw trees, turning gold, and we saw green fields in the low lands and all of this was backed up with the mountains. It was a beautiful drive.
Today we head into Colorado and colder weather so I’m giving up my sandals (boo-hoo). We were so glad to see that freak snow storm hit the east coast and not Michigan. We know we are headed into colder weather this week on our way home.
No comments:
Post a Comment