13 & 14 SEP 2010

September 13 was a traveling day and really there is not much to report. We knew that driving from San Antonio to Carlsbad, NM would be a long drive and it was. We felt it was worth the drive to ensure we have a full day to explore the Carlsbad Caverns. The only comment we would make about traveling up to New Mexico was that the closer we got to Carlsbad we saw terrain that we have been missing - hills, and vegetation that reminded us so much of back home.

September 14 we are heading off to find the national park and the caverns. We had to stop several times so I could take pictures of some of the vegetation. Especially the different types of cacti we passed on the road. In addition to the cacti we noted there were a lot of wild Yucca’s scattered around the landscape. We since learned that this is the state flower.

(Faxon Yucca)

Row 1: Ocotillo; New Mexico Prickly Pear;  Cane Cholla Cactus; Ocotillo

Row 2:  Cane Cholla Cactus with Yucca in background; New Mexico Prickly Pear Cactus; New Mexico Prickly Pear Cactus

Row 3:  Sotol Yucca; Cane Cholla Cactus with Yucca in background;  Faxon Yucca

We turned off the highway to follow a road that curled through a canyon to the top of the ridge to the entrance to the caverns. This height provided a spectacular view out over the valley below. We decided the view was like the view we experienced at Waterton National Park. In this case the view from the top of the flatlands below provided us with vista that stretched for miles.

Before I describe our time in the caverns, I will give a bit of information about the caverns. The Carlsbad Caverns National Park begins in the Chihuahuan Desert of the Guadalupe Mountains. Below the surface is the underground world of Carlsbad Caverns. The cavern is an incomparable realm of subterranean chambers and artistic cave formations. There is a long explanation about how the caverns were created, but I know if you are interested you will look it up. What is interesting is that involves a 400 mile long reef in an inland sea, oil, gases and water.

Carlsbad Caverns includes a large cave chamber, the Big Room, a natural limestone chamber which is almost 4,000 feet (about 1,219 m) long, 625 feet (190.5 m) wide, and 350 feet (about 107 m) high at the highest point. It is the third largest chamber in North America and the seventh largest in the world.

A young man of 16, Jim White explored the caverns with his homemade wire ladder. He discovered, explored and guided. He gave many of the rooms their names, including the Big Room, New Mexico Room, King's Palace, Queen's Chamber, Papoose Room, and Green Lake Room. He also named many of the cave's more prominent formations, such as the Totem Pole, Witch's Finger, Giant Dome, Bottomless Pit, Fairyland, Iceberg Rock, Temple of the Sun, and Rock of Ages.

(Erect Dayflower with New Mexico Prickly Pear Cactus in background)

Ok, enough history and geology development. It is time to talk about our exploration of this cavern. There are two entrances to the Cavern. The Natural Entrance is an opening through a cave and has a very steep decent down about 750 feet. Off to one side of the Natural Entrance cave is a bat cave (no not the marvel comic’s batman cave). We never got to observe it, but each evening hundreds of thousands of bats leave the cave to feed. Watching them leave the cave is spectacular we are assured.

The second entrance is via an elevator that takes you down to the Jim White Tunnel where the guided tours start. This is where you find the souvenirs shop, snack shack and rest rooms.

We signed up to take the 10 am guided tour so had to take the elevator down since the natural entrance would put us late for the tour. The great thing about a guided tour is that you can go into areas that are not available on a self-guided tour. In this case we were able to go to the Kings Palace which took us to the deepest part of the cavern open to the public. This took us to the Green Lake Room, Kings Palace, Queens Palace and the Papoose Room.

After we finished this guided tour we took a self-guided tour of the Big Room which tours around the perimeter of the largest cavern. This gave us ample time to really look over the incredible formations creating stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws, draperies, flowstone, columns, lily pads in cave pool, cave pearls, popcorn, helictites, aragonite crystals and rimestone dams.

After we finished this we returned to the surface for lunch then came back down via the Natural Entrance. To get to the cave entrance we had a chance to look around the topside of the park and enjoyed the stone construction maintenance buildings. At the entrance to the cave we chatted with a park ranger who answered alot of our questions about how it must have been to enter the cave and caverns when it was first being explored. She told us about how tourists were dropped down into the cave the 90 plus feet in buckets. Of course now it is a walk way which switch back and forth in a very easy grade to walk.

We also discussed the bats and cave swallows who live in the cave. Did you know that in a cave and cavern voices carry for up to ¾ of a mile? Or that in the cavern beyond the twilight zone (the area between daylight and total darkness) you cannot see anything. Total black is not often experienced by us since we often have some ambient light. Try taking a picture of that!

We finished by driving out to the Rattlesnake Springs to have a look. We thought with a name like that it would have some interesting features. The best I got was a picture of a dragonfly. Oh well, it was still a great day.