Oh Arizona, the land of John McCain. It certainly has a much different feel than the places we visited on our last roadtrip through Northern California. While we were waiting for our tour to start, I overheard a couple of tour guides chatting about the current economic crisis. After a bit of Obama-bashing, one of the guides put forward a plan that he heard about via email. According to him, the government should take all the bail-out money back and give it out in equal payments to 30 million random Americans over age 30. Three conditions would be attached to this money: (1) they must retire immediately; (2) they must buy a house; and (3) they must buy an American-made car. The thinking behind this plan is that it would free up 30 million jobs, it would stabilize the housing market, and it would rescue the auto industry. Hmmm, what do you think of his plan?
Getting off the interstate and driving down Route 66, I can’t help but think of the Pixar movie Cars. In the movie, the main character is a big-city hotshot who finds himself stranded in a small town, Radiator Springs, off the beaten path that was forgotten after a large interstate highway diverted all of its traffic. The little town was brimming with enthusiastic entrepreneurs literally falling over themselves to accommodate visitors that would never come.
The Grand Canyon Caverns felt like a mini-Radiator Springs. It was a combination gas station, motel, mini-mart, RV park, rodeo arena, restaurant, and tourist attraction. The front entrance from the highway had a big sign saying “You’ve Found It: Grand Canyon Caverns!” propped up next to a large fiberglass dinosaur. Hmm, caverns and dinosaurs!
To complete the Radiator Springs metaphor, our tour guide through the caverns was a human Mater, the tow-truck character whose voice was provided by Larry the Cable Guy. He was a rough-cut man with a large belly, a bushy mustache, and a sort of wheezy smoker’s voice complete with a southern twang. He also looked as if he had a fat wad of chewing tobacco stuffed in his bottom lip. He was actually the one I overheard brainstorming ways to fix the economy. Despite the somewhat scathing description, he was nice enough.
For $28 (AAA discount!) Ashlee and I got to ride an elevator 200 feet underground to a series of subterranean caverns. Our guide said that in the early 20th century a couple of locals happened upon an open shaft that appeared to plunge deep into the earth. With visions of gold and jewels dancing in their minds, one of the men agreed to be lowered into the hole over a hundred feet with only a lantern to light his way. After exploring for a few hours, the man returned to the surface and reported to his partner that the shaft led to caves full of gold, silver, and diamonds! Thinking they hit the jackpot with the world’s first gold/silver/diamond mine, the men bought up all the land and began to excavate. It turned out that the gold was actually rust, the silver was a sort of metallic powder, and the diamonds were a non-precious substance called selenium, or as our guide put it: “nature’s popcorn ceiling.” In an attempt to salvage the situation, the men turned the caverns into a tourist attraction. They charged people 25 cents to be lowered down on a rope to explore the caves alone with a lantern.
Now here we are almost a hundred years later paying $14 each to do basically the same thing with only a few (major) exceptions: we get to use an elevator; there are concrete paths lined with rope lights; and we had Mater wheezing his way along with us.
The caverns themselves were really impressive. Twenty stories underground, they are extremely dry and maintain a constant temperature in the mid 50s. Back in the 1960s during the height of the Cold War, the government turned the place into an impromptu nuclear fall-out shelter. They filled one of the larger caverns with huge drums of water, saltine crackers, and rock candy in the hopes that it would be enough to support two thousand people for two weeks. Luckily the shelter was never used and the supplies are still down there, making the caverns a still-functioning bomb shelter. I can only imagine what the supplies must taste like.
Among other things, we saw a mummified bob cat, a life-size model of a giant ground sloth that fell down into the caverns and died trying to claw its way out, and we heard that all the air in the caverns actually originates 40 miles away in the Grand Canyon.
All in all, although parts of the tour were a bit hokey (i.e. Rocky the rock dog), it was still pretty interesting.
After leaving the caverns, we jumped back onto Route 66 and made our way back to the I-40. Along the way, we passed through the real Radiator Springs. Self-proclaimed the “birthplace of Route 66,” Seligman, Arizona was a tiny little town that appeared to be absolutely hurting for business. I noted several international flags hanging about, yet saw one hotel with a prominent sign saying it was “American-owned.” God bless the USA, we don't want no dang foreigners taking our money...
We’re now on the 40 headed east through Williams and Kaibob National Forest to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. According to The Lady, we’ll be there by 4:30. Woo hoo!
PS – I’m already hungry. Thanks, McDonalds.
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