Rather than stay in the town of Carlsbad, which is over 20 miles from Carlsbad Caverns National Park, we decided to drive through the town and stay at a commercial campground in White’s City right at the outside gate of the National Park. White’s City was a collection of commercial establishments set up right outside the park, no doubt in the hopes of capitalizing on the tourist trade, apparently, however, business had not been good, because all of the facilities including the gift shop, motel and restaurant appeared to be suffering. This extended to the RV campground, which looked like it had not received any maintenance or upkeep for years. It may well have been a fine campground 20 years ago, but now it is “a dump.” It does, however, have functioning electricity and good water pressure, and it is right next to the park. The best thing about the campground, however, is that when we drove into the park we saw this little creature scurrying down the road ahead of us which we recognized to be a roadrunner. It didn’t look like the one in the cartoons, but it did look funny, and boy did it move fast as it ran down the road trying to get away from us. Unfortunately, Jo was looking at the campground map and didn’t have her camera at the ready to capture this little creature on film. Beep Beep!!
After setting up the Big Sky and having lunch, we drove the several miles to the visitors’ center in the park. Unfortunately, the regular visitors’ center is being remodeled, so everything is now set up in nearby temporary trailers. While this was adequate for buying tickets for the next day’s tour, there were no exhibits about the park like we are used to seeing in the visitors centers as our first step in getting to know the parks we have been visiting.
After buying our tickets for the following day’s guided tour, we drove around to the 9-mile
scenic drive through Walnut Creek Canyon. This was a very nice exposure to the desert landscape, amplified by the joy of having this drive to ourselves – we did not see another person or another vehicle at any point during this 90 minute drive. We did, however, have the opportunity to see several roadrunners scurrying down the road ahead of us. Jo was not, however, able to get any really good photographs as these darn roadrunners just moved away too fast. David wished that he had a camera so that he could take pictures of Jo running down the road trying to take pictures of the roadrunners. Jo was able, however, to get a photo of this little fox that ran across the road right in front of us and then paused once he got into the bushes to stare back at us. She also got some shots of a hawk that was flitting from bush to tree to cliff face while watching for prey.
The next morning we headed up early to the park to begin our cave explorations. Based on her uncomfortable experience at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, Jo was a little apprehensive about taking another Cave trip, but we had been reassured by the ranger the day before that the caverns were large enough that she should not feel any of the effects of claustrophobia. And was he ever correct.
While most visitors begin their tour of Carlsbad Caverns by taking the elevator down 750 feet, we went down the “Natural Entrance,” which
followed a long series of switchbacks to get down to the caverns below. The hike down through the natural entrance was extremely impressive – we would frequently look down and be amazed that, notwithstanding the long hike we had already taken, the cavern continued to drop deeper and deeper into the earth. Once we got down to the main cavern level, we were overwhelmed by the “Big Room,” which is the main attraction for visitors to Carlsbad Caverns. This huge cavern extends many football field lengths horizontally as well as going off to spurs to one side or another. The ceiling in many places extends 40 
to 80 feet upward and nowhere do you get a feeling of being in a confined cave. Most importantly, everywhere we looked, there were awesome cave formations from huge numbers of stalactites hanging from the ceiling, stalagmites growing up from the floor, “flow stone” coming down rock walls and/or drapery hanging everywhere from the ceiling. While the formations were mostly white in color, and did not have the varied colors of the formations in Luray Caverns in Virginia, the sheer number, size and beauty of the formations in the Carlsbad Caverns’ Big Room were just overwhelming.
After an extremely enjoyable tour of the Big Room, it felt strange to utilize the underground rest rooms and visit the nearby snack bar for lunch. Had we been up on the surface, all of this would have been normal. But to have a snack bar, gift shop and restrooms 750 feet underground just seemed WEIRD!!! But to Jo having the opportunity to shop 750 feet underground was certainly a good experience.
After lunch we met at the designated spot to join the guided tour we had paid an extra fee for so that we could see the “Kings Palace” portion of the caves. This 90 minute tour took us through several caverns with overwhelmingly beautify cave formations. Plus, we had the added bonus of a Polish-born Park Ranger who led our tour and entertained us with her amusing stories and her obvious love of Carlsbad Caverns. By the end of the tour it was startling to realize that we had spent the last 6 hours underground enjoying this marvelous National Park. Our only regret was that we had not been able to see the evening flight of the hundreds of thousands of bats who live in the caves from May to October, as these bats had migrated south to Mexico several weeks before we arrived. High on our list of future adventures is to come back to Carlsbad Caverns when the bats are in residence so that we can experience this peculiar adventure.
After setting up the Big Sky and having lunch, we drove the several miles to the visitors’ center in the park. Unfortunately, the regular visitors’ center is being remodeled, so everything is now set up in nearby temporary trailers. While this was adequate for buying tickets for the next day’s tour, there were no exhibits about the park like we are used to seeing in the visitors centers as our first step in getting to know the parks we have been visiting.After buying our tickets for the following day’s guided tour, we drove around to the 9-mile
scenic drive through Walnut Creek Canyon. This was a very nice exposure to the desert landscape, amplified by the joy of having this drive to ourselves – we did not see another person or another vehicle at any point during this 90 minute drive. We did, however, have the opportunity to see several roadrunners scurrying down the road ahead of us. Jo was not, however, able to get any really good photographs as these darn roadrunners just moved away too fast. David wished that he had a camera so that he could take pictures of Jo running down the road trying to take pictures of the roadrunners. Jo was able, however, to get a photo of this little fox that ran across the road right in front of us and then paused once he got into the bushes to stare back at us. She also got some shots of a hawk that was flitting from bush to tree to cliff face while watching for prey.
The next morning we headed up early to the park to begin our cave explorations. Based on her uncomfortable experience at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, Jo was a little apprehensive about taking another Cave trip, but we had been reassured by the ranger the day before that the caverns were large enough that she should not feel any of the effects of claustrophobia. And was he ever correct.While most visitors begin their tour of Carlsbad Caverns by taking the elevator down 750 feet, we went down the “Natural Entrance,” which
followed a long series of switchbacks to get down to the caverns below. The hike down through the natural entrance was extremely impressive – we would frequently look down and be amazed that, notwithstanding the long hike we had already taken, the cavern continued to drop deeper and deeper into the earth. Once we got down to the main cavern level, we were overwhelmed by the “Big Room,” which is the main attraction for visitors to Carlsbad Caverns. This huge cavern extends many football field lengths horizontally as well as going off to spurs to one side or another. The ceiling in many places extends 40 
to 80 feet upward and nowhere do you get a feeling of being in a confined cave. Most importantly, everywhere we looked, there were awesome cave formations from huge numbers of stalactites hanging from the ceiling, stalagmites growing up from the floor, “flow stone” coming down rock walls and/or drapery hanging everywhere from the ceiling. While the formations were mostly white in color, and did not have the varied colors of the formations in Luray Caverns in Virginia, the sheer number, size and beauty of the formations in the Carlsbad Caverns’ Big Room were just overwhelming.
After an extremely enjoyable tour of the Big Room, it felt strange to utilize the underground rest rooms and visit the nearby snack bar for lunch. Had we been up on the surface, all of this would have been normal. But to have a snack bar, gift shop and restrooms 750 feet underground just seemed WEIRD!!! But to Jo having the opportunity to shop 750 feet underground was certainly a good experience.After lunch we met at the designated spot to join the guided tour we had paid an extra fee for so that we could see the “Kings Palace” portion of the caves. This 90 minute tour took us through several caverns with overwhelmingly beautify cave formations. Plus, we had the added bonus of a Polish-born Park Ranger who led our tour and entertained us with her amusing stories and her obvious love of Carlsbad Caverns. By the end of the tour it was startling to realize that we had spent the last 6 hours underground enjoying this marvelous National Park. Our only regret was that we had not been able to see the evening flight of the hundreds of thousands of bats who live in the caves from May to October, as these bats had migrated south to Mexico several weeks before we arrived. High on our list of future adventures is to come back to Carlsbad Caverns when the bats are in residence so that we can experience this peculiar adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment