March 2, 2013 Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

We camped in some free BLM land. No hook ups, just parked in the desert, quiet and dark, all by ourselves. We took the bus to the caverns, John did not think the bus would be safe just left in the desert.

John with two aliens in White City. White City is the tourist trap at the turn off for the caverns. We walked into the natural entrance to the caverns. Right at the entrance is an amphitheater that you sit in at dusk to watch the bats come out of the cave in the summer. There are thousands of bats, it takes  up to 2 hours for them to come out there are so many. I saw  it years ago and it was awesome. They don’t let you take photos, talk or move, might scare the bats. Cloud and after cloud of bats spiral  out the cave into the sunset to eat bugs. All you can hear is the wind from their wings. Very beautiful. In the winter they have migrated south, so we missed them this trip.

Here is a map of the walk down. We followed the blue line. The green is a tour of the Kings palace you have pay extra for. At the bottom are rest rooms, a gift shop and café with cold salads and sandwiches. They don’t allow you to bring food, they say the odor entices animals from above to come down, then they get lost and die.

It is a mile and a half walk ,mostly in the dark, down  a steep 800 feet to get to the big room.  We had an audio tour that pointed out the highlights and gave us some of the history of the caverns. The big room is so HUGE that it is impossible to take pictures. There is not enough light and it is just too big to capture.

The Big room has 600,000 square feet of floor space. It is comparable to 14 football fields. It is the largest known limestone chamber in the western hemisphere. The ceiling is 255 feet tall in the highest spot. It is a 1. 5 mile walk around it. It is lit in an theatrical  style, to show off the best parts and rest is dim like a cave. You can only stay on the walks and you can’t touch any of the  natural features- they are too delicate and our skin oil can damage them.

Mostly I could only get photos of the smaller wall stuff. These two guys are in the hall of giants in the middle- huge.

There were stalactites hanging from all of the ceiling above us. This one on the right was John’s favorite.

The right photo is the chandelier and the totem pole.

The cavern was discovered by Jim White, a 16 year old cowboy who came investigating what he thought was smoke rising from the desert. It was clouds of bats. He came back with lanterns and ropes. and explored. It was years before anyone believed him and came to see it.

For years they mined the bat guano (poop). The early tourists had to ride down 17 stories in old guano buckets, then climb down on wooden steps and ladders made of wire and wooden rungs. They only had lanterns for light. The lanterns did not light much, they did not see most of the features and were mostly in a dark pit. Then they had to climb back out. Now days the park service has built nice smooth walk ways, installed electric lights and the elevator.

You can view stalactites, stalagmites, columns, soda straws, draperies, lakes, bottomless pits, cave popcorn, cave bacon, figures, animals,and various other speleothems. Speleothems are cave decorations. It was incredible. You can’t take photos of it that do justice, or describe it, you just have to see it. It took us over 3 hours to walk down and tour the big room. After that we took an elevator up the equivalent of 80 stories back up to the visitors center.