STAG PARTY!!!

Mom’s Birthday was finally here.  More plans and fun things to do on her BIG 9-0!

Kartchner Caverns State Park

The family took an excursion to Kartchner Caverns.  With a trunk full of food, enough to feed us if the car broke down and we were stranded for a week (or in the case of my family about an hour), we were adequately prepared to brave the adventure of the cave…and being away from the kitchen table for a few hours.

Rich made reservations for us to tour one of the caves.  What can be said about The Throne Room?  For starters, it was the perfect choice between the two caves for us to visit in as much as my mother is the Queen Bee and Queen of all Things that Sparkle and Glitter.

My only hope was that there wouldn’t be any bats flying around inside the cave.  Not a big fan of bats, having had an incident while living in Spain, reminiscent of Hitchcock’s, The Birds. Even in Tucson, during the summer at twilight when the weather is finally cooling down and the backyard is calling my name to sit and enjoy living in a resort community, I last about a blink outside on the patio when a multitude of bats enter my space, driving me into the house at cougar speed.

Bats arrive late April, give birth in June and leave by September

Too bad I didn’t bring a schmattah for my head, I thought. At least if the bats dove, they wouldn’t get stuck in my wavy hair.  So much for protective covering or lack thereof.

Anyway we were early, purchased the tickets and had just enough time to watch a movie that explained the discovery of the cave.  It was pretty impressive, I must say.  I imagined myself coming across an opening in the ground, barely large enough for an adult to squeeze into and couldn’t help but wonder:  Would I crawl into a black abyss?

True, I staked out the Alcazar Castle in Segovia, Spain one evening planning and plotting how I would get myself locked into the renowned castle to do a little exploring on my own, seeing rooms and hopefully walls that would turn, leading me down a long passage to many secret rooms off base to tourists.  But, who knew I would actually end up getting locked into the castle that very night and would spontaneously accept the invitation of the Spanish Militia to “show me around” the dungeon.

So, would I explore unknown territory?  Being lipstick, stiletto and haute couture girl, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would. 

The answer:  probably, with a little bit of coaxing.  I’m pretty adventurous, even though I hate getting dirty.  

But I do have my moments and if I had sufficient gear, and food, or course, I think I might.

Fortunately two other men, Randy Tufts and Gary Tenen, made the decision easy for me since they discovered the cave back in 1974.

After the movie, we met our guide, John, who was a hoot and he explained all the do’s and don’ts of being in a live cave and how fragile the environment is.  We walked through a mist of vapor which takes off  lint, debris and dust from our clothing to protect the cave.

The humidity in the cave was overwhelming, even in the winter. I was overdressed and schvitzing in my sweaters, so the spray of water actually felt good and gave my hair an extra curl here and there.  The partial vapor facial wasn’t too bad, either, except if you were my mother whose hair becomes instant cotton candy at just a hint of humidity.  I couldn’t wait to see if she’d look like Albert Einstein by the end of the adventure.

The good thing about being ninety is you can get away with anything.  Off-color comments to looking like Albert Einstein.  With just a shrug of her shoulder, who would dare have a confrontation or cross word?  The woman is ninety after all.  Have some respect.  Ha!  They should only know.  She could outwit most Mensa members and most Nitwits, to boot.

Ninety is the New Sixty!

I thought the cave would be dark and imagined John handing us those metal hats with the attached flashlight miners wear when they are digging for coal.  Talk about a bad hair day. Fortunately the inside of the cave had been slightly excavated for tourists with a walkway, handrail and hidden lights illuminating parts of the cave.  It was magical inside.

John explained the differences between stalagmites---the formations that grow up from the floor of a cave by the constant dripping of calcareous water and stalactites, which are shaped like an icicle hanging from the roof of the cave also formed by calcareous water.  

He pointed to each with a flashlight and then showed us thin delicate formations that looked like extra long soda straws, also hanging from the top of the cave. These straws are brittle and with one wrong move they could disintegrate.

At one point during the tour, a man and his child needed to leave the cave.  Bathroom break.  So, while John traversed back to the opening of the cave which was hermetically sealed with a metal strong door to lock out any contaminants, the group of fifteen of us waited, looking over the rail into the darkness at the extraordinary formations illuminated by a few lights. 

On the bottom of this particular area in the cave was a mud floor.  John had mentioned before his departure that when the cave was originally discovered, the men walked in up to their waist.  Mind you there were no lights except for their flashlights which only lit up to fifty feet in front of them…too late to turn back once they were waist deep in the mud.

See, now that wouldn’t work for me.   It probably would for my mother.  She has no problem getting her hands dirty.  I didn’t get that gene.  I eat pizza with a fork and knife.  Get the picture?

So, perhaps spelunking isn’t in my near future, but anyway, while I looked around the cavernous room, I imagined it filled with pipe organs.  Of course the feasibility is impossible, but, hey!  It’s my fantasy.  A little Phantom of the Opera meets Desert Cave Dwellers.

And with that crazy thought, I found my feet had a mind of their own and I scurried to each group of people, whispering that it was my mother’s birthday and would they mind singing Happy Birthday to her?

The acoustics would be amazing, pipe organ or no.  They loved the idea, asked her name and on the count of 1-2-3, like Lawrence Welk (a one-ah-A-two-ah-A-three-ah) we began.

My mother was stunned and delighted.  How many people get sung to in a cave with the acoustics of a cathedral?  And besides, we were heading to the Throne Room to celebrate the Queen of Cool.  Pretty apropos if you ask me.

At the end of the tour, it was time to eat.  Naturally.  We went back to the car to collect our feast and sat at a picnic area surround by the beauty of the desert and backdrop of our magnificent mountains 

as well as a table fit for the Queen of Nosh: potato chips, sandwiches, drinks, and a mound of black and white cookies...ALL GONE!  It's a family thing.

Rich, Mom, Heidi Goldman, Erika (Bobby~The NoogieMan, Photographer)
Food Gone! Smiles a-plenty!

Now, this is the stuff that memories are made of!

Mom, Bobby, Heidi Goldman, Erika and Rich

PS

Photographs are prohibited inside the caves.  The photographs included in this story were taken by The Arizona State Park and Steve Holland. They were scanned from postcards purchased inside The Discovery Center to give you a bird's-eye view of the extraordinary Kartchner Caverns.

Park Information:

AZStateParks.com/Parks/KACA

Information Line: 520.586.4100

Reservations:      520.586.2283

PSS

After visiting Kartchner Caverns, rumor has it that our singing is now prohibited inside the cave, too!