February 17, 2017

We've never spent a lot of time in New Mexico, so on this journey through we decided we'd visit a little. We left the direct route of Hwy 10 West and headed north a little to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. We were told that this was a 
'must-see' and they did not steer us wrong.  Carlsbad Caverns is a breathtakingly beautiful place. It’s New Mexico’s only national park and has been designated a World Heritage Site.

The Natural Entrance

The Carlsbad Caverns feature over 100 caves. 

The "Natural Entrance" is the entrance into the cavern. There is a pathway that takes about an hour to walk down to get you to the 'Big Room' which is the huge underground chamber in the cavern. 

"The Bat Cave"
home to thousands of Mexican free-tail bats
who roost here from March to OCtober

The caverns were forged by sulfuric acid – not water erosion, as is the case with most limestone caves.

There are no flowing rivers or streams inside the caves.

In the 1880s, people didn’t go into the caves to admire them. Instead, they were there to mine for bat poop! Apparently, guano is a powerful fertilizer. The bats here are Mexican free-tail bats and as many as 300,000 of them billow out of the caverns each night.

Some people are under the impression that James (Jim) Larkin White was a cowboy who stumbled upon the caves by chance. He was actually a guano miner who explored the far reaches of the caves in his down time. It is up for debate who first found the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns.

Before 1925, guests who visited the park were lowered into the caves in a big bucket. Makes you grateful for the elevator, doesn’t it?

They used ladders like these to tour the caverns.

The Bottomless Pit in Carlsbad Caverns definitely has a bottom…

The temperature in the caverns holds steady at 56 degrees Fahrenheit.

In 1959, Carlsbad Caverns served as a location for the movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Filming took place in the Kings Palace and the Boneyard.

Hall Of Giants -
these three speleothems are the largest
in the cave

Some of the guided tours through the caverns are a real adventure, requiring participants to crawl through the caves. We just did the self guided tour - the one hour walk down the path into the Big Room, then the hour walk around the Big Room. By that time I was happy there was an elevator to scoot us up 750 feet to the top....