Carlsbad Caverns National Park was a short drive from Guadalupe. We found an RV spot in the parking lot, and left SiSi to hold down the fort while we toured the caverns.
Carlsbad Caverns is a series of enormous rooms that make up one of the world's largest caverns. Much of it is still unexplored. The natural entrance is 90 feet high and 40 feet wide. You can take an elevator both ways into the cave, but we elected to walk in through the natural entrance. This route is a mile long paved trail that descends 750 feet under ground following steep and narrow trails. There were many interesting things to see along the way, including an abandoned bat cave.
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| Natural Entrance |
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| The trail down |
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| This formation, which resembles a whale's mouth, was visible on the walk into the cave |
At the end of the trail was the largest room in the caverns. We took another mile long walk around the perimeter of the 8.2 acre room where we saw many unusual formations. When we had finished touring the cave, we took the easy way out and caught a ride up on the elevator.
The park service has done a good job of lighting the cave. The light is low, but adequate. Important formations are individually lit. And they ask everyone to keep their voices low. This helped to preserve the cave's eerie atmosphere. Our little camera and my cell phone have done a pretty serviceable job of recording our trip thus far, but they were not up to the job of photographing Carlsbad Caverns' low lighting. I had to delete about 75% of the pictures that we took. Here are some of the better ones.
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| Notice the old ladder that was once used to enter the caverns |
Our schedule didn't permit us to attend Carlsbad's popular nightly bat flight program. An amphitheater has been constructed at the mouth of the cave. After a ranger talk on bat biology and behavior, several hundred thousand bats emerge from the cave on their nightly search for food. We would have loved to have seen this program, but, unfortunately, our campground was too far away from the park.
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