Kartchner Caverns State Park

returned to the turnoff for the state park, where I turned right and drove to Alamo Dam Road, then turned right again. From the first turnoff, it's 6.5 miles to a ranger station and feecollection point. A half-mile farther stands a small grocery store, near the boat launch and the lake's southern shoreline, suitable for wading, picnicking and birdwatching. After nearly a full day of exploring side trails, having lunch while watching an itinerant flock of pelicans, and loitering here and there around the lake, I took the southerly route home down the paved Alamo Dam Road. The two-lane highway runs through farming country about 38 miles to U.S. Route 60 and the little town of Wenden, where I gassed up for a leisurely twohour return to Phoenix. All All WARNING: Back road travel can be hazardous if you are not prepared for the unexpected. Whether traveling in the desert or in the high country, be aware of weather and road conditions, and make sure you and your vehicle are in top shape. Carry plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone at home know where you're going and when you plan to return. Odometer readings in the story may vary by vehicle.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Alamo Lake State Park, (928) 669-2088, www.pr.state.az.us/parkhtml/alamo.html.

Newly Opened Big Room at Kartchner Caverns Reveals 'Living' Wonders

THE EARTH BREATHES - its intake and exhalation measured in seasons. In the caverned heart of the Earth, people stand and stare, sensing the vitality of living stone. Now visitors have a whole new set of wonders to marvel at when they visit Kartchner Caverns State Park, one of the world's 10 most colorful and varied limestone caverns, where air seeps into the cave half the year and breathes out the other half as changes in temperature and humidity alter the difference in air pressure between inside and outside.

After years of painstaking, over-budget, high-tech surgery to build a trail, install massive airlock doors and string delicate dim lights, the park opened the second half of the cavern-a fantasy "castle" decorated with rock formations that appear to be of dripping stone. The Big Room-400 feet long and 240 feet wide-dwarfs the portions of the cave that have been open to the public since 1999. Those sections have drawn an estimated 500,000 visitors, and they bring in roughly $2 million a year, which supports Arizona State Parks. A 1,220-foot wheelchair-accessible trail winds carefully through the soaring spaces of the Big Room, past the lurid formations of the Strawberry Room and into the intimate, stunning Cul de Sac. The small group tours of the new cave sections should bring in another $1 million per year-even though tours will halt all summer to avoid disturbing the colonies of nursing bats, which have migrated to this cave to raise their young for as long as 50,000 years. Some of the cave's most bizarre and