More of Colossal Cave

Here are some more photos of our visit to the cave a few weeks ago...

Almost like dripping lava!

A mano and metate from the Hohokam Indians who lived here from 900 to 1450  A.D.

Can you see the shape of the Terranosaurus Rex head here?  Well, there have been a few movies and TV shows made in Colossal Cave, and one was a show with the Muppets.  Big Bird saw this dinosaur head and got scared.....

and he ran right through the rocks leaving this big hole! :-)

Mining apparatus...bat guano was mined from the cave and used in not only fertilizer, but women's cosmetics! (Yuk!)

Nuns praying is what this is called, if I remember correctly, but it looks like a circle of dancers.

When I posted the first pictures of our visit to the Cave, several people commented that they would have trouble going inside because of claustrophobia.  I actually have claustrophobia myself, but for some reason it was very easy to be underground for that half hour!  I'm not really sure why!

It looks like a waterfall!

Our grandson...maybe a bit less wide-eyed! :-)

At the End of Those Blocks...

....another church fence and gate.  It was so lovely I decided to do a post on it by itself.  This is linked to Fridays Fences.  Go by and check out all the great fences and gates.

I have to mention that on Thursday, the 27th as I posted this, I noticed that it is the anniversary of the opening of Radio City Music Hall in 1932.  Many Christmases ago, when our daughter was a young teen, we spent Christmas in NYC, staying in my sister's apartment while they went to Vermont for the holidays.  It was magical...we saw the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall that year, and it started snowing as we watched the ice skaters at Rockefeller Center.  My sister had left presents for children that had needed to be turned in somewhere earlier, but she had missed the deadline.  We had the addresses, so we drove all over the City delivering the gifts in person on Christmas eve.  That was very special.  It was special that we were all together, and is a Christmas that I will always remember....Hope you each had a very blessed and special Christmas this year and that the new year will be filled also with God's greatest blessings in your lives....

A Little Look at Our Christmas

We had Christmas Day at our daughter & family's house last year (and Thanksgiving here) so this year we switched and had Thanksgiving at their house, and Christmas here.  They arrived as the bird was in the oven roasting, and the dressing ready to put in, and they brought all their packages, except my daughter's gift from her hubby (because it's so heavy!:-) ) a beautiful new Kitchenaid mixer.  We had a wonderful time opening our gifts, and then we had a wonderful meal.  We watched Its a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story, like we do every year, and the sharing was so special.  How thankful we are that Jesus came to earth as a small baby so He could be among us, and then die for all our sins, and rise again!  How thankful we are for all His many blessings!

The Christmas program at Church--the Spicers telling the Christmas story to the children.

Starting with the stockings....

on to the bigger gifts.

I think he likes it!

My big present to Russell

and...drumroll, ,, guess who's getting an X-box soon!

One of my wonderful gifts from the kids.

His first rifle...a Steven's Little Favorite single shot .22

                                        

We had a wonderful Christmas!  Hope you did too!

The Rest of The Three Blocks....

For Fridays Fences, the remainder of the three and a half Tucson blocks....

Look closely and you can see a "hanging cherry" motif in this gate....

the white stucco wall had these "inserts" all along it with the repeating design!  One of the most clever garden walls I have ever seen!

A  wonderfully antique styled gate in this wall, with no steps...

Another view, showing one of the lights that were on each side and you can more easily see the iron scrollwork above the wooden gate.

The classic white picket...with an orange tree.

We had turquoise iron fencing in the last block, now we have lavender....

complete with its lavender ironwork gate.

Colossal Cave Excursion!

Time for a special family outing.  We decided to head to Colossal Cave about an hour away from us.  What a wonderful place to go!  It was a gorgeous sunny day, in the high 70s, and we all enjoyed our day together immensely. And I now have finally been able to utilize a new gizmo to get my pictures off the memory stick from the camera and into the computer!  At last! :-)

King of the world!

An interesting use for a saguaro skeleton!

Colossal Cave Mountain Park is in the mountainous area south of Tucson, AZ.

The entrance to the cave is small, but it was originally just the top portion of this carved out space and the first person to find it (after the Native American Hohokam Tribe, which no longer exists) was Soloman Lick in 1879 who crawled in the small hole and then fell down about six feet!  The Hohokam had used the cave as a place of shelter, refuge and even for spiritual purposes for a long time.  

The formations inside the cave are just wonderful, though in early years there was a lot of vandalism of the  stalagtites, which is horrible shame.  I took some of the shots with the flash and others without.

The same spot without the flash.

The cave became a tourist attraction and tours were held with no real stairways, handrails or lighting inside, just the candle or lantern the explorer held in his hand!  Sometimes these "tours" lasted for hours or even for a couple of days!

Our family looking up at the ceiling of one of the "rooms."  Looks like our grandson spied  something scary! :-)

Light shining through.

We had a wonderful tour guide (on the right of this picture).  She had been married in  one of the rooms the year before.

                           

This was a cat feature in the rock....with the flash.....

and without.

  October 3, 1882 Nine prisoners escaped from Pima County Jail. Three of them, indicted for the murder of a gambler, are apparently tipped off about Colossal Cave by their jailer, George Cooler. Once it was determined that they were hiding in the cave, the deputies decided to starve them out...only they didn't realize that the bank robbers had been in the cave before, and knew a secret way out.  They had escaped into the hills long before the lawmen knew they were gone! 

The stairways and handrails were built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) during FDR's administration. We traveled a half a mile up and down stairways and through craggy rocks during the tour and it was fascinating!  

I will be doing at least one more post of our day at the Cave and the Ranch nearby.  If you would like to learn more about Colossal Cave, here is the LINK to their website.  It's a wonderful place to visit.