11-AMERIND MUSEUM AND GAMMON’S GULCH

Some 20 or so miles from Benson is the small town of Dragoon. Near there is the Amerind Museum and Art Gallery.

Founded in 1937 by William Shirley Fulton, the Amerind Museum houses a spectacular collection.  It includes prehistoric items from archaeological excavations in the Americas. There are also more recent items from Native cultures since the time of contact with the first Europeans.

Mr. Fulton had an amazing collection that he has put on display here.

This is a phenomenal museum collection and we thoroughly enjoyed seeing it. This is the first room we entered. Again, there were no picture taking allowed, so these pictures are from the web resulting in them being a bit less than sharp.

Don actively started to collect Indian pottery from the southwest many years ago. Here we saw a wonderful collection of very early pottery which caused Don to indulge in some heavy duty coveting.

I couldn’t blame him. There was some wonderful works displayed there.

Then there was the basketry….

…and jewelry. Being a maker of pine needle baskets myself, now it was my turn to be covetous…and of course beautiful jewelry is always to be appreciated.

Next door was an art gallery, with again, very impressive paintings that Mr. Fulton had collected and put on display here.

Our next stop was at Gammon’s Gulch. This place is about 15 miles north of Benson in the middle of the desert and very much off the beaten trail.

Gammon’s Gulch is an old time movie set filled with lots and lots of genuine antiques. Numerous movies have been done here with three more scheduled in the upcoming months.

Walking in, we were met with a hearty hand shake by Jay Gammons, owner, operator and story-teller extraordinaire. Mr. Gammons is, we guessed, somewhere between 70 and 80 and at whatever age, still packed with lots of energy…and with no shortage of stories at any point in time.

Although he built this place from scratch, there are lots of “old” buildings ready for the movie makers…

…including the gallows next to the church, just for convenience sake, I guess.

Inside the buildings there was no end to the genuine antiques that they held.

Of course there was a jail…

…and the view outside the jail window was a grim reminder of where one might end up after spending a short time as a guest of the “establishment.”

Jay took a short break while we looked around at the mining area on a hill right behind the town. (Jay said he hates cowboy boots and the ones he was wearing were hurting his feet.)

As we finished walking through the mining area we could hear banjo music…

We found Jay on the porch of the saloon, picking away (with a fair amount of expertise) on his banjo.

Inside the bar he played a mean honky-tonk tune on an old out-of-tune piano.

The saloon, in addition to the elk and the old cash register, is a large room with tables where people can bring a picnic lunch and spend time there. We didn’t have lunch but enjoyed Jay’s endless stories about all the actors he has worked with, those he liked and those he didn’t.

Jay has a number of old cars and trucks on the property, most of which he says actually will run. Of course he had stories about all of them.

Don could have stayed all day listening to the stories and telling his own. I dragged him out of there after a couple hours.

Gammon’s Gulch is a gem in the desert, and Jay is a true character and one not to be missed.

Next stop is Tombstone and a Donkey Rescue. (Talk about off the beaten trail…)

10-ARIZONA CAVIN’

After Tucson, we drove about an hour south to Benson. From there we decided to do some exploring of local caves…not just any caves, but CAVERNS.

Our main focus would be on Kartchner Caverns, but before going there, we visited Colossal Cave.

The Visitor Center is a rock building that you view across the valley before your arrival.

On the patio was a statue of a CCC workman representing the men who did the work on the cave and Visitor Center in the 1930’s.

Going through the entrance to the park, they rejected our Golden Age Pass, telling us that it is “county owned.” The county needs to put some money into this tourist attraction. The road was in terrible condition and the cave itself was obviously a low priority to the county, which was a shame as it could have been so much more.

Before we went in they warned us that the cave pathway contained 356 steps. My new knees began to shake and get weak at hearing those numbers. However, they had already taken our money and…

…a colossal cave is a Colossal Cave, so in we went through the black hole.

Just as we entered, another tour was coming out. A man in the group was puffing and straining, commenting that he had “two new knees.” Well, join the club! At least he made it so I figured I could too. Thankfully, the steps were in stops and starts, not in one long painful stairway, so I did fine.

From the walkway in this cave, the spaces are smaller in most places than what we have seen in Kartchner Caverns, not claustrophobically tight, just closer.

When the man who bought this property to turn it into a tourist attraction found this cave it had been entered by many people for a number of years. They did a tremendous amount of damage to it.

Virtually all the stalactites hanging from the ceiling had been broken off for souvenirs.

In spite of the damage, there were still beautiful cave decorations.

There were many different formations in the cave including this large flow stone formation.

After Colossal Cave, we moved on to bigger and better caves.

Kartchner Caverns State Park is just south of Benson and only a few miles from our RV Park. As far as we are concerned it is the crown jewel of caves, at least of the ones we have visited. We have been here twice before on other trips but never tire of seeing it again.

The story of Kartchner Caverns is amazing and I will only give you a snippet of it. It was discovered by two college students back in 1974 who were cavers (spelunkers). They were looking around the hills, knowing that the geology of the area could lend itself to possible caves.

After finding this cave (not knowing at all what they had really discovered) they kept it a secret for 17 years lest others would come in and destroy it as they had seen done many times before. (See what happened to Colossal Cave.) Finally they notified the Kartchner family who owned the land and eventually it was made into a State Park.

The state went to great lengths to protect the cave. Concrete walkways (with no steps) were put through the cave and are washed down every night to remove impurities that might damage the cave.

Entry to the cave means you walk through an area that sprays a fine mist on everyone to remove lint that is unhealthy for the cave environment. (It also removes hairdos. Just sayin.’)

However, inside it is spectacular. There are no cameras, purses, cell phones or water bottles allowed inside, so needless to say, I got my photos off the web.

Thin stalactites, called soda straws hang from the ceiling everywhere. They are about the thickness of an actual soda straw and have water that slowly drips down through them causing them to grow at amazingly slow paces.

The many minerals in the cave that water flows through, results in formations in many colors and designs. This is called “Cave Bacon” for obvious reasons.

Stalactites of varying thicknesses hang from the ceiling and stalagmites grow up from the floor. There are some formations found here that are not found is any other caves in the world. This is considered one of the Top Ten Caves in the World.

This formation is called Kubla Khan it is 58 feet tall. There is a caver at the bottom which gives you a feel for how large this actually is. It also gives you an idea of how high the ceiling is in this cave.

These formations area called draperies.

At Kartchner Caverns there are two tours, The Big Room and the Throne Room. Each is one hour and forty-five minutes long. We saw the Throne Room one day and the Big Room the next day. They are both absolutely spectacular. The Throne Room is our favorite. Reservations are required and we highly recommend the visit.

By the way. I think God had an absolute blast making this cave!

Next is the Amarind Museum and Gammon’s Gulch.

9-TUCSON, ARIZONA

The last few days have been spent enjoying absolutely perfect weather in the Tucson area.

We parked the RV in the driveway of friends, Tom and Una Bowman. They have a beautiful home looking across the Tucson valley to the mountains beyond. We enjoyed Una’s perpetual smile and Tom’s wise-cracking as well as their hospitality.

We took Tom and Una with us to show them the petroglyphs in the Saguaro National Park not far from their home.  They had never been there. We found the petroglyphs on our last trip here and they are a bit off the beaten trail, not easy to find.

Saguaro National Park is rightly named as Saguaro cactus are everywhere.

We reached the rocky hill where the petroglyphs are located, being watchful for slinky critters. A group of school kids were there ahead of us so we figured that if snakes were around the kids would be bait and wouldn’t be interested in us…we hoped.

What we forgot since our last visit here, was that the trail to where all the petroglyphs are, has many, many steps up to the top. I know this picture looks mostly like a simple path, but trust me, there were many steps of varying heights, challenging old legs and knees. However, all four of us made it with no heart attacks reported.

From the lower levels, we could see a variety of drawings.

From up top there were more, however, signs said that no one really knows what they mean, only that they were done by the Hohokam Indians a long time ago.

Views across the desert from the top were impressive.

Our next stop was Mission San Xavier del Bac, a historic Spanish mission named in 1692 for a pioneering Christian missionary.

The inside is very ornate. It has been a continually working mission since that era. Currently damage from age is being renovated.

The next day we met up with Lisa and Rich Atkinson. Don and Rich have been close friends since 1978. Since this was a Saturday, Rich sacrificed his usual weekly golf game to spend the day with us which we greatly appreciated.

We next visited the Desert Museum, which is more of a zoo than a museum. It is an amazing place, again in the Saguaro National Park.

First we entered the Hummingbird enclosure. Now I don’t know if you have ever tried to photograph hummingbirds, but they are not good at posing for you. Finally I found one sitting on a nest who was actually holding still enough for me to take a picture.

There were cactus gardens everywhere. This cactus has spent blooms and yellow seed pods under where the blossoms used to be. Chipmunks climb up and take the yellow pods off, open them up and eat the seeds inside.

There were numerous animals, Big Horn Sheep…

Bob Cats…

Napping Javelinas…

A Mountain Lion and much more. (Sorry about the slobbers on the glass from little kids.)

In between the animals we we saw, were specular desert and mountain views.

The next day was a trip to Sabino Canyon, by ourselves. It was a weekend day and the parking lot was jammed full of cars. We nearly decided to just forget it, but didn’t, which was a good thing in the end.

We rode a tram all the way up the canyon and back again. Younger people hiked either part or all the way.

A narrow winding road built in the 1930’s snakes up the canyon.

Sabino Creek runs along the road, right now at low level. They are hoping for rain soon. There are several very narrow bridges across this creek. The tram only misses the edge of the bridges by a couple inches on each side. An earlier tram had hit a bridge, slowing the trip up the canyon.

It was a beautiful, relaxing ride and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next we are going to Benson, Arizona, just south of Tucson and doing some caving among other excursions.