Somewhere off the beaten path of 1-40 lies a small hut with a long elevator that leads a few hundred feet into a large, privately owned collection of caverns located beneath the Arizona desertland. The Grand Canyon Caverns are a long way from the Grand Canyon, but were given their name because the cavern ventilates itself at the Grand Canyon.

As we pulled into the empty parkinglot, I couldn't help but think how cheezy the entrance to the caverns looked. I'm used to Carlsbad Caverns National Park with its clean, modern buildings, well paved, well lit paths, and lack of large Tyrannosaurus Rex out front.

The ferocious T-Rex had a nest in his mouth, hahahhahahhah!!! This was NOWHERE near as cheezy as the fake, stuffed Sloth they had in the caves to illustrate the sloth skeleton they found in the cavern. The cheezy sloth replica took away from the claw marks in the rock. The sloth had fallen into the caverns and scratched at the walls to get out. They even dug out some pieces of the sloth's nails from the cavern wall.

Look at that beautiful Arizona sky! Whoever says that the desert is a yellow, dead place has obviously never cruised through central Arizona. The colors were extremely vibrant, and the thunder clouds ahead were quite vast and ominous.

The story behind the Grand Canyon Caverns is that a cowboy was on his way to a poker match through the desert and found the hole (which turned out to be a burial site for a pair of deceased Native Americans) and bought up the land around it. There were no precious metals to be found, so to attempt to recoup his costs, the cowboy opened it up as a tourist attraction. They would lower you on a rope into a dark hole with little less than a lantern to see by. The locals called this the "dope on a rope", and obviously the business didn't do very well. Eventually he sold the property and the new owners crafted the elevator down and the huge fake T-Rex in the parking lot.

The caverns were sold again to a developer who intends to finish exploring the caves and make it into a proper tourist attraction.

My mother and nephew in the caves. The path was cut through the caverns and paved and fenced. The tours were guided, and our tour guide was a scrawny woman who looked like she'd been out in the desert sun for too long. She tried to be witty and funny and sometimes failed, sometimes succeeded at entertaining the masses. The only thing I really didn't like is that she kept the pace brisk. Our feet were hurting from our long Grand Canyon walks.

 

The caves had several other uses in addition to being a sparsely attended tourist attraction. Food and supplies for the pending Nuclear holocaust are stored there, and the caverns have twiced open their doors to weddings.

Perhaps one of the kewlest things in the caves besides the sloth claw marks were this poor contorted bobcat, who fell into the caverns and perished in the fall over a hundred and fifty years ago. The cavern's constant temperature preserved the kitty until humans came by and disturbed it, causing its fur to fall off.

Having completed our tour of the Caverns, we headed out to Vegas!