Monday, June 23, 2008

"We're going spelunking"

That's what my friend Chris tells people when they ask what the plan is for the weekend. I look at him at remind him once again that spelunking is not what we are doing. There are no caves involved in our plan for Saturday. What is involved is drainage tunnels.

 

I am on a mission to find some new and interesting tunnels, and Chris is excited to join. We start the day out going through the tunnel underneath Rush St. I've been here before, but Chris hasn't, so I figured I would show him the awesome graffiti that is in this tunnel.

 

After tunnel 1, we head over to a tube that I remember playing in as a kid. We always got scared (no flashlights, duh!) and never went very far in. As it turns out, the tunnel becomes too small to traverse after only a few hundred feet, so this one was a bust.

 

Next we tried hunting down some culverts that friends had mentioned, but found them to be too small for us to enter. Feeling slightly defeated we headed to New Frontiers to grab a bite to eat. They were having a big BBQ with live music, so we stayed for a bit to listen to the band Sweet Nasty, who were surprisingly good (going to pickup their CD when it gets released at the end of the month).

 

Renewed, we opted to go across town to continue our quest for coolness.

We ended up finding a tunnel that leads from the Coca-Cola distributor, underneath Lowe's, and lets out directly behind the crumbling retaining wall. It was tall and wide, and was quickly traversed.

 

Lastly, we went looking for a tunnel that I heard about from a fellow Flickr user, who mentioned that there was some graffiti to be found inside.

 

We went looking for the entrance, driving slowly around the walmart parking lot until we found what we were looking for. We parked the car, gave the keys to Wally-World for an oil change (hey, a little multi-tasking never killed anybody) and headed in.

 

At first I was a little disappointed by the lack of graffiti, so started taking pictures of other randomness:

 

As we neared the end of the tunnel though, we hit the good (though slightly disturbing) stuff.

 

And we saw light at the end of the tunnel:

 

Which lets out to this spillway, between the old highway 69 roads, and makes you wonder how somebody actually got a shopping cart this far down the spillway:

 

All in all, a pretty good day of 'spelunking.'

7 comments:

Melissa said...

Love the look of that New Frontiers place. Yum. :)

That is freakin cool that you went, um, spelunking. ;) I dig the graffiti of course. I also love that b/w shot looking upwards.

TomboCheck said...

Melissa - yeah, New Frontiers is a pretty cool place. Lots of good food, though it is pretty much THE hippy store in town, so the odors you can get in there can be very interesting. A little steep on some of their prices, but maybe that is part of the appeal?

Every time he would say that we were going spelunking the only thought that I would have was "Chris, it sounds like are gay when you say that." but he just kept on telling everyone. :)

Thanks for the compliments.

Granny J said...

Tombo -- I am truly impressed with the truly unknown sides of Prescott that you have found and explored. I am quite green with envy!!! Wish I were in condition to go spelunking...

Catalyst said...

Very interesting post, Tombo, but remember to avoid those tunnels during the monsoon season!

Chickenbells said...

That looks like fun!

I abhor it when NF has a big weekend thing ON the weekends (I mean, really when else would it be?!?!) But...it takes up all the damned parking!

TomboCheck said...

GrannyJ - Thanks! :) I'm always a little surprised at what I find in the places where humans aren't supposed to be. As long as I keep finding stuff, I'll keep looking for new hidey holes.

Catalyst - For sure! There is always an eye to the horizons before going into anything related to drainage. Whether it be a tunnel in town, or a creek out in the woods.

I lived right next to a creek that would flood every monsoon season. Setting up the sandbags in july was always a staunch reminder of the power of water.

BTW: Rockin Avatar!

TomboCheck said...

Sadira - It's totally worth it though. The music was great, and the food was a bargain (if not exactly the tastiest thing I've eaten) at $3.00!