Day Trip from Tucson: Colossal Cave

Is a trip to Colossal Cave worth it? Our friends from Phoenix recently asked if we wanted to join them at Colossal Cave. We immediately said yes, especially since we’d never been. Colossal Cave is located in Vail, which is a short drive, and a day trip from Tucson. We booked our tickets in advance for a tour last weekend.

This was one of those days where everything went wrong. Ever have one of those days?

In my rush to get out of the door, I forgot my camera. That in itself wasn’t too bad - I still had the camera on my phone, and it worked. Mostly because it’s difficult to take good pictures inside a cave. The big mistake, though, was made when I initially purchased the tickets. The website indicated that children that are 3 years old and younger are free. So I didn’t purchase a ticket for my son. When I checked in at the gift shop, though, I was told that I needed to still count him, because the tour was full and now the tour was over the allotted number of people.

Ugh. We ended up still going on a tour, but overall, it was a stressful situation, so learn from my mistake, whether you are booking a tour for Colossal Cave or somewhere else.

So the big question is - was the tour worth it? My answer is yes. Especially because my son was very interested in the cave. The tour guide gave us background on the cave, and did a good job of trying to keep the younger children on the tour engaged by telling them that Sesame Street characters filmed a movie there 🙂 In case anyone is wondering which movie it is, I ended up googling it and my guess would be “Sesame Street Goes Western.”

My son also really enjoyed it when the guide would show us some of the rocks that were formed like certain animals, like a cat. There was also a rock that was formed like a dinosaur, as well as Santa Claus.

Overall, it was a fun and educational visit for all of us so I’m glad we were able to still take a tour. Here are some of the pictures that I was able to take.