We got up on Wednesday to slightly less chilly temperatures than the day before, which made it easy to get up, get dressed, eat, and head for Carlsbad Caverns. The wind had picked up a little overnight, but we were fortunate that it was a tail wind as we drove from Guadalupe Mountains NP directly to Carlsbad Caverns NP. We arrived at the park around 9:30, about an hour before our ticketed time to enter the cavern. We went into the Visitors’ Center to see what was there before going underground, and found that they were letting people in ahead of their scheduled times because the park was so lightly visited that morning. We got our tickets and went back to the truck to dump extra jackets and sunglasses that we wouldn’t need underground, grabbed a water bottle, which is the only thing you’re allowed to take, and headed for the cave.
Tom and I were both really excited about visiting the cave, but we were a little skeptical about how impressed we’d be with a cave where you could tour guideless on a sidewalk after all of our fantastic crawl-on-our-bellies caving experiences through seldom visited caves in Belize. We shouldn’t have worried, because as with the other National Parks we’ve visited, the park officials designing the experience have done an exceptionally good job of preserving the beauty of the park while making it accessible. Yes, there’s a paved path through the park, but there’s no blatant damage to the cave evident as a result of the path even though it’s obvious that some destruction was necessary to build the path. Yes, a guardrail runs along the entire path, but that’s actually a good thing because it keeps people from touching the formations, as well as keeping them safely on the path. Yes, the entire cave is electrically wired and lit, but it’s hard to find any of the wires, and the lights are strategically placed to enhance what you see rather than blinding you so you miss things. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but the lighting is perfect for the night mode on my iPhone camera, and between the good lighting and the good camera, I took lots and lots of really nice photos, no flash necessary. Excellent interpretive signs dot the path, explaining what’s visible as well as explaining how the formations were formed. The entire path is about 2.5 miles if you choose to enter by foot rather than on the elevator, and it took us almost 3 hours to walk through because there was so much to see and photograph. Of course we also chose to walk back up the foot path, which is a little over a mile and rises about 700 feet, but because we’d already stopped for all the photos we wanted on the way down, we actually walked up faster than we walked down.
Below are a few of the over 100 photos I took, which really don’t do the cavern justice. The photos don’t show the sheer magnitude of the cave, and while the iPhone camera is great, some of the beauty of the formations is lost.
Below are a few of the over 100 photos I took, which really don’t do the cavern justice. The photos don’t show the sheer magnitude of the cave, and while the iPhone camera is great, some of the beauty of the formations is lost.
Our only disappointment is that visiting at this time of year you don’t get to see the bats, who head south to Mexico in October and don’t return until sometime in March. But, the fact that the cave is so lightly visited this time of year is some compensation for that. For us, our walk through the cave was dark and quiet, and I imagine it could be quite a different experience with lots of people taking flash photos and talking.
We left the underworld and had a quick lunch in the camper before heading for Brantley Lake State Park, just north of the city of Carlsbad. We did a quick grocery stop before easily finding the campground and getting settled well before dark. We woke up this morning to 22 degrees, so we were very glad we’d decided to pay to stay at a campground with electricity available for our heater, and we’re using the fact that we also have water to catch up on laundry, which is one of those inevitable necessities that is a lot more difficult on the road than you would expect, even with an on board washer.
We left the underworld and had a quick lunch in the camper before heading for Brantley Lake State Park, just north of the city of Carlsbad. We did a quick grocery stop before easily finding the campground and getting settled well before dark. We woke up this morning to 22 degrees, so we were very glad we’d decided to pay to stay at a campground with electricity available for our heater, and we’re using the fact that we also have water to catch up on laundry, which is one of those inevitable necessities that is a lot more difficult on the road than you would expect, even with an on board washer.
We didn’t get to see the bats, but we did get to see some long horned sheep on our way out of the park.