Caverns and Bodies, Trip to Tucson

Last week we took my parents down to Tucson for a mini-vacation:) We had an awesome time and saw and learned tons!! I'll never forget this trip!!

We piled into the car early in the morning and headed south. Monsoon season has really cooled things off here (hurray!) and has also brought with it humidity and beautiful skies! The poofy clouds seemed to keep us occupied a lot of the time. We found all kinds of shapes and animals in them!!I think we were all fascinated by them too because they were so low to the ground. Jacob kept asking if we could drive up the mountains so he could put a handful of cloud in a jar:)


Marissa was so excited when were finally able to get out of the car and move around! She was soo excited about going into the caves...where the bats live!

Back in the 1970's, two guys found a sink hole and went exploring. After about 6 hours crawling and digging, they found these HUGE CAVERNS filled with stalactites and stalagmites! After trying to buy the land and realizing someone already owned it, they and the owners kept the caverns a secret for some 14 years before selling it. It was then turned into a National State Park.
The Caverns were absolutely stunning!! Back when I was in college, a bunch of us went Spelunking. We found a couple of big caves, but I could not imagine discovering something of this magnitude!
It was about an hour and a half tour. At the end of the tour, we got to sit in the Thrown Room. All lights turned off for a moment and then we were blessed with an amazing light show put to music. I could have sat there for hours!!! The beauty,size and magnitude of this place was amazing!
The two guys who discovered the caverns were very careful to not disturb natures beauty. They followed the same trail each time they went in and out. At one point, in the bottom of the caves, you could see their trail through the thick mud on the bottom. The mud was almost waist high at some points.
Beautiful! I want to go back!! Oh, and by the way, it's totally against the rules to take photos in the caves. ....don't stress out! I took pictures of pictures in a book that mom bought:) They turned out pretty good though, huh?
Who would have known such beauty was hidden underneath some of these mountains?
Here's a very large beetle-bug thing. Jacob surprisingly didn't know what it was, but wanted a photo of it.
Mom and I after going through the caves. As you can see, it was actually very humid down there! Our hair frizzed and curled right up and our mascara was starting to run. lol:)
I was so grateful that Mom and Dad were able to experience this with us! Kartchner Caverns is one of the only caverns in the nation that is wheelchair accessible. Dad has really bad knees, so it was just exciting and amazing to me that we were able to take him down there!



Jacob prefers to not have his picture taken....I'll take what I can get:)

Earlier in the week, we talked to Marissa about the caves. I just wanted to prepare her so she wouldn't be freaked out by going down in the ground and in the dark. For some reason, she found this purple hat in her room after that, and declared this hat to be her "cave hat"! So she was insisted on having her cave hat with her at all times. It was super cute!
I swear that's not "instant tan" on my face, lol! Being in the sun all summer with swim lessons has really done a number on me.
I post this picture only because it makes me laugh. My mom kept going crazy over these ants hauling such big flower petals! I felt like I was back in second grade as she spouted out all of the facts about ants and how they can carry 100 times their own body weight......So I took this and printed it off for her:) She laughed and I know that she was secretly very excited to have it, lol!!

~~ Bodies The Exhibition~~

Another thing we did while is Tucson, was go to the Bodies Exhibition! It was frustrating that yet again, another thing that I couldn't take pictures of. With that being said it didn't, however, stop me! I just had to get creative again, so we took pictures with the building instead!

The dude was just talking too loud...dad couldn't listen to it anymore:) It was cool of him to give my parents a huge though!
This was an amazing thing to see! We learned so much about the body! We got to hold a liver, femur and brain. The brain that we held was normal on one side (white and "fluffy" looking) and the other side was more flat and dark. This was because the person had died from a brain aneurysm. The section of fetus' was hard for me, but still very interesting. We saw a baby that was 16 weeks along. Our baby, Timothy, was 19 weeks when we lost him. I think the boys liked being able to visulize how big our baby was. It made me cry, but as I said, it was extremely interesting. The funny thing is that size-wise, they were close to the same, but our baby looked just like Brant, so the features were so different even as tiny a baby as they were. Mom got to see what a Mole pregnancy looks like. She had one (@ 5 months along) before I was born and back in the day, they wouldn't let her see it or anything. I think it brought her some closure after all of these years, to see that. I'm glad we were able to share this part of the trip together.
Marty was having way too much fun with the Bodies! I love these pictures!!!

Tucson proved to be a really great trip!! Glad mom and dad got to experience all of this with us!!