Kartchner Caverns and Tombstone

Over Labor Day Weekend we decided to drive down to Kartcher Caverns and Tombstone. This is a picture of the largest insect I've ever seen. It's called a Horse Lubber Grasshopper and it was easily the size of a small child.


Perhaps to accommodate the size of the grasshoppers, the people at Kartchner Caverns offer extra-wide parking spaces. I was so impressed, I took a picture.

I don't know what it is about the pregnant body, but I always look like I'm slouching. I even made a mental note to stand up straight right before Tyler took this picture. Perhaps he took it during the time after my brain decided to look poised and before my shoulders responded.

Tyler wanted to take this picture to show that not all of Arizona looks like a dustbowl. It was actually quite pretty here. The caverns were just down a hole, and you're not allowed to take any pictures inside, hence why we don't have any. The pictures probably wouldn't have turned out anyway because they keep the lighting really low so as not to dry up the moisture in the caves. They weren't as big as I remember the Mt. Timponogas caves are (but I haven't been in those for probably 12 years, and you know how big things look when you're young.) Not as big, but still impressive.

Tombstone was less impressive than I had hoped. I think I would have liked it a lot more if I didn't have a cranky two year old who was hankering for a nap in her own bed. We also forgot our Frommers, so I couldn't remember what I had planned for us to do. Below is a picture of me in a saloon pretending to be one of the Earp brothers (the one with the big mustache).

By the time we found the O.K. Corral (you'd think there would be more signs pointing to it), Lillian had pretty much had it. The wall right there closes up the alley where the famous shoot out actually happened and you have to pay money to go see a live reinactmet. I was all for it, but Lillian had other ideas about what she wanted to do with her time.