A Colossal Cave

The last cave we visited, although beautiful, was a bust to do a blog on so we managed to find another cave to review. I felt I had left our cave lovers feeling unsatisfied. This cave has a long history. Natives lived in it up to 10,000 years ago and left lots of evidence like animal skulls and arrow heads. More recently bank and stage coach robbers used it as a hideout and a number of movies were made here as well. You must remember the classic "The Muppets Go West".

There were miles of underground trails and caverns and the cave was fun to explore. The formations and colours were no where near as beautiful as Karchner Caverns, mainly because these caves have seen a lot of traffic and everything seems to be covered with dust. Colossal caves have been open to the dry desert air for centuries and it has dried out and no longer has any water to make new formations.
You can see from this picture that the interior is dirty from all the traffic and desert air that comes in. Most of the stalactites and stalagmites have been broken off by vandals and these were the best examples we saw. Do you know the difference between the two formations? If it has a "C" it hangs from the ceiling; if it has a "G" it rises from the ground. Or as the tour guide said "when the mites go up the tites come down". That gives a more visual way of remembering don't you think?

The cave sits on a hill side and part of the park is a working ranch that you can explore. You can see by the trees that a stream flows through the valley so we're going to head down there and check it out.

But first we stop for a picnic lunch and to check out the trails we can hike. The building behind me as an actual adobe house built in the 1880's. Its hard to believe dirt bricks can last that long.
The ranch house has been turned into a museum and gift shop but the original layout remains. There is a lovely centre courtyard with friut trees and a fountain. It must have been a great oasis during the hot summer days.

We picked a nice trail to hike that wandered alongside the stream and cotton wood trees. In that area there was lots of grass for the cattle. This area has been lived in by natives for centuries and village sites are marked and drawings showed how they lived. Almost every plant here had some use for them. Its hard looking around to see much use in the scrub and cacti. They sure had different skill sets than we do; I'd like to see them do a blog!