Kartchner Caverns

After a nice nights rest at the Best Western in Benson, we woke up and headed to Kartchner Caverns.

The boys were very excited to use their head lights to explore the caverns, but soon learned there were very strict rules that included no lights, no purses or back packs, no touching, no cameras. They are very serious about preserving the beauty of this living cave.


If anyone touches anything in the cave, they tag it and a crew comes in every night to clean the cave. Jake put his knee on the path's edge twice, but the guide was very nice and just marked the area appropriately.


The cave is 78 degrees all year round with 98 percent relative humidity. It is so full of amazing formations, but Carsen and I loved the Bacon the best.

There was a neat museum for the kids to explore and a movie to explain how the caverns were found. The museum had some small crawl spaces like the original explorers had to wiggle through to find this amazing, hidden place.

We were only allowed to explore part of the caverns because one of the rooms becomes a bat breeding ground from April to October. Luckily that one is closed and mother's aren't forced by their sons to go and investigate. This is just a small sample of what one little bat family would look like. YUCK!

Once we had toured and explored, we headed to the gift shop for a souvenir of the caverns. Jake picked a bat, Carsen filled a bag with gems (polished rocks) and Derek got Beagle and Maltese magnets.

We loaded back into the car to head to our next destination!