Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Carlsbad is in the Chihuahuan Desert and under the Guadalupe Mountains.  It is the deepest, largest and most ornate caverns ever found.  They were formed by water 4 to 6 millions years ago. The entrance road to the park is 7 miles long.  The landscape for most of those miles was charred by fire that burned about a month ago.  It is really sad to see all of the vegetation, trees, cacti and even the rocks all black.

 The cavern is either a self tour or you can do a ranger led tour.  We did the shorter self tour.  There is a longer on from the natural entrance but it is pretty strenuous and had warnings for diabetics so we opted for the tour that began with an elevator ride down 700 feet.  It is just over a mile around the big room route.  The big room is 8.2 acres with a path around it. The picture on the right is from the hall of giants and shows the giant and twin domes.

These two show the colors that are in the cave.  The pictures actually show the color much better than in the dimness of the cave.

Totem pole on the left and on the right is a still forming stalagmite with a pool at the bottom.  It is wet from the drips falling from the ceiling.

Left, is called the bottomless pit but is really less than 200 feet down.  Right is an old ladder that was used to explore the cave many years ago, I think it was in the 1920's but am not sure.

We left the park for a bit but returned in the evening for the bat flight.  Every evening around 8:15 thousands of bats leave the caves at the natural entrance.  This wasn't the best time to see them.  Rather than a huge swarm there was a steady stream.  The area hasn't had any rain since March so the insect population is down and so is the bat population.  The rangers aren't sure how much the fire impacted the colony or if the white nose syndrome is hurting the local bats.  We had to wash our shoes off in a Lysol type solution at the Mammoth Caves due to white nose syndrome. It was a beautiful evening to see the bats.  Only in the low 90's, a nice breeze, clear skies and a moon.  It is truly worth the time to see them and we are so happy we hung around.