Feb 5, 2010

It was a lovely day yesterday, sunny and light wind. We downloaded a batch of geo-caches in the area and spent the morning having a great time tracking down the easier ones. We passed on the one that was only a mile away as the crow flies, but it was zig-zag back and forth up a rather sizable hill. The view would have been great, though. Here's Gypsy near one of the caches.

We did the second tour of Kartchner Caverns in the afternoon. It was fun to watch the docents get so excited about seeing water in places that had been dry for so long. There is a formation they called a fried egg that has a small bowl in the center of the stalagmite where the water drips in and splashes out, depositing the calcite around the rim. All the ones we saw had water drip, dripping in and splashing and the docents were oohing and ahhing over each one. As the grand finale, we all sat in the main chamber watching a light show highlight each of the spectacular features of the room. Just beautiful.


Today we moved down to Bisbee. I pictured this town as a typical desert town, all flat and squared off. It is anything but. It’s in a narrow canyon and the town follows the contours of the hills. It was the major source of copper for decades and there are mines in every direction. In fact, the RV park where we’re staying is on the tailings of one of the biggest mines, the Queen Mine. We’re going on a tour of the mine tomorrow. Dow the road is the Lavender open pit mine which was the source of Bisbee turquoise as well as copper. There are cute little Victorian houses and lots of galleries and houses way up the sides of the hills that can be reached only by long flights of stairs. I’d hate to have to drag groceries up those steps. We picked up a big stack of hand-outs on things to do in Bisbee and visited the local mining museum. We’ll stay here for a few days.