I don’t know about you, but I certainly got my exercise visiting the Carlsbad Cavern!!
It's a 7 mile drive once you turn into the Carlsbad Park and what a drive!
Visitors Center
We did not realize that we needed to get tickets ahead of time for some of the tour hikes and missed out on two of them. The gal told us those two were really strenuous and we most likely would have had a difficult time on them. We would have had to climb ladders and ropes in some of them. Instead of the ladder and rope tours, we did the Natural Entrance and the Big Room tour and the Kings Palace Tour.The Natural Entrance Tour we were told us is a really steep 1¼-mile descent which is equivalent to about 80 stories from the cave entrance to the Big Room. They said this tour is recommended only for those in good physical condition. People keep telling us these things when we try to hike. I get the impression they think we are wimps.
From the Natural entrance tour you come to the Big Room Tour.
Since we arrived early we decided that. “Heck, we can do the Natural Entrance tour into the cave.” This walk took us around the location where you can watch the bats exit the cave from April to mid October. Thousands of bats. Now can you understand why I wanted to wait until November to go to the caves. How all those thousands of bats know when November hits is pretty amazing but somehow the park personal tell us all the bats know.
Bat Amphitheater
Bat entrance and exit
We walked around the bat exit area and started our downward descend into the cave. We walked in a switchback fashion never realizing that all this switch backing was equal to an 80 story hike. We zig zagged like forever before we even saw anything interesting. My legs were killing me by the time we had dropped those 80 stories (830 Feet) All that time we were going down, sometimes pretty steeply going down, was done with very little light inside. Besides I just knew there was a bat just waiting for me to go by. The walkways mostly had hand rails to guide us and it really was quite safe except I expected to grab onto a bat hanging in the dark on that handrail. I’m just glad we did not have to walk back the way we came. You know how when something is really difficult and you get to where you are supposed to be and what you see is beyond description. This was an oh my gosh type of an experience. We found ourselves whispering because it did not seem like we should be there.
We were allowed to take pics but that is not an easy task to do at all. Those professional shots you see take a lot of prep work and when you stop, shoot, and walk you don’t get much. A special thanks to my daughter and family for getting me the monopod. It worked great. Notice I said the monopod worked great not the pics were great.
Views from the Big Room
Big Room
Ladder used when the cave was first discovered
The Kings Palace tour started at 2:00pm. It was a one and a half hour guided tour through four unbelievably decorated chambers, better known as the king's room, the queen's room, and the papoose' room. There is an elevator you take to get down to the cave and this is where this tour started. We descended a total of 830 feet beneath the desert surface and this is the deepest portion that is open to the public. This tour was not as difficult as the natural entrance route, but this one mile tour does require descending, and later climbing, an 8-story hill. We saw a variety of cave formations that were given names like draperies, columns, and soda straws. The Ranger actually had a black-out during the tour, and you guessed it. It was totally black. We could see nothing. Makes one wonder how the first explorers could see anything at all with just their lanterns.
My pic of the day
This was called 'The Great Lakes.' That green water was eight feet deep.
Tomorrow we are on the road heading toward Chiricahua Monument National Park which is in Arizona.
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