Today we visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and, in particular, the Carlsbad Caverns…
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is in the Guadalupe Mountains of southeastern New Mexico. Approximately two thirds of the park has been set aside as a wilderness area, helping to ensure no future changes will be made to the habitat. The primary attraction of the park are the Carlsbad Caverns.
We arrived at about 10:00 am and checked out the visitor center. Then we headed to the “natural entrance” of the caverns… Along the way we saw these buildings; the stone buildings were built by park employees in the 1920s, and the stucco buildings were built by the CCC in 1940…
Carlsbad Cavern includes a large limestone chamber, named simply the Big Room, which is almost 4,000 feet long, 625 feet wide, and 255 feet high at its highest point. The Big Room is the fifth largest chamber in North America and the twenty-eighth largest in the world. There are other rooms and chambers which require special ranger-guided tours. We chose the self-guided tour, since we didn’t want to crawl through small tunnels… Visitors to the Big Room can hike down on their own via the “natural entrance” or take an elevator from the visitor center. We, of course, walked in – about 1 1/2 miles long of winding, steep paths descending about 750′ underground.
The entrance today is quite impressive, but easy to use…
But in the olden days things were different. The original explorers who discovered the cave had to climb down rude home-made rope ladders. The first visitors to the new National Park in 1923 were lowered in a mine bucket down 700 feet into the ground. Finally, by the late 1920s, park employees had built wooden stairways. You walked down to get in, you walked up to get out… Finally, in the 1930s, the stairs were replaced by paved ramps, and the first elevators were added…
At this “natural entrance” there is a small amphitheater. Starting in April and continuing through the summer people come at sundown to sit and watch the thousands or millions of bats ascend up out of the bat cave via the natural entrance in search of airborne bugs and insects. Apparently it is quite a sight, although, it being March and all, we didn’t see the bats. We could smell the bat quano, though…
So we walked through the natural entrance, walked the 1 1/2 miles down to The Big Room, and around the Big Room, seeing the sights. Photos don’t show the scale or the depth of these spaces, but they are very impressive. We mostly saw “decorations”, what the parks people call the stalactites, the stalagmites, columns, draperies, straw tubes, and on and on…
Pictures don’t capture the size of the space, but this diagram shows one area – the Liberty Dome above and the “Bottomless Pit” below…
The caverns are dramatically lit, and the “decorations” are stunning…
After 3 1/2 hours underground we were quite done in. So we opted to take the elevator back to the surface…
We drove back through the town of Carlsbad, fueled up the truck, and returned to the Villa. We snacked and had Happy Hours and a light supper. Tomorrow we leave early for our travel into Texas to Fredericksburg…
And an enjoyable time was had by all…
Adventures in the Villa 