Not quite the Batcave - Saturday, August 27, 2005

Let the pictures tell the story of the day.

Here is some power plant that looks what I remember Freddy Krueger worked at in A Nightmare on Elmstreet 2. This is actually from entering northern AZ on Friday morning.


Tyrel has a really nice apartment. The rent isn't bad and it's fairly spacious. He's got a lot of posters from movies like Scarface and Reservoir Dogs on his walls. His refrigerator is filled with tortillas and cheese to make Quesadillas, the staple of his diet, as well as lots of chocolate, soda and orange juice.

This day, Tyrel and I went caving in Coronado State Park. This is about thirty miles from the Mexican border if I recall accurately.

Upon entering the cave, after a rigorous hike up the ascending trail, we greeted a man and two women leaving the cave, who gave us a cave map, which is kind of hard to read they way they draw the cross-sections. They told us about the bats they saw deeper in the cave. Unfortunately I saw no bats, though Tyrel said one flew by when we are climbing up to an opening that the park rangers put a grate over for some reason.

There was so much buzzing along the trail, I thought we were going to get swarmed by killer bees or something. I've never heard so much insect noise before. The cicadas in summertime New York are nothing in comparison.

Luckily my camera and spare flashlight I keep in my car had straps on them so I could free my hands up for climbing and crawling. There would have been plenty of times I might have dropped them otherwise.

Here is Tyrel at the back of one part of the cave. The flash seems to have worked really well. I was afraid it wouldn't.


Here is Spider-Ma. . . I mean Tyrel crawling around upside down. That's the sort of thing he likes to do. A couple of months earlier, he nearly killed his friend, Suesan, when she fell trying to climb to where Tyrel was. I'm told she took it like a soldier, as there was lots of blood and gore, but she didn't fuss too much about it.


Me:


Here I am, trying to crawl into this little cavelett. It's rather claustrophobic in there. We had to crawl a couple of hundred feet, over rough rubble to get to that mini-cave that I am trying to make my way into. Tyrel couldn't quite make it in so I attempted it. I got my head and shoulders in there and started excavating the loose rocks beneath me. I think I could have made it in, but it was only about three feet in diameter, but about twelve or fifteen feet high. Getting back out might have been something of a problem, since I could not have laid down in there. As you can see there is lots of graffiti in the caves. Though some areas are still clean as I was informed by Tyrel that the cave was still forming.


The mountains of Coronado State Park.


Look at these pretty flowers on the trail up to the cave.


Look! A poisonous creature! Finally. I'm told you can pick them up and if you get bit, it doesn't hurt for that long. Tyrel says the same of scorpions. But I'll take his word for it.


We came across this critter leaving Coronado State Park. Tyrel spotted it so I told him to turn around so I could see it closer. It was very slow moving and stopped when we approached it. Ty spit some water at it like a jackass, and it went and sipped some and went on about its way.