Day 18 – Carlsbad Caverns

Heading south on route 62, we are on our way to the Carlsbad Caverns NP.  Carmen took this picture and got the two Carlsbad billboards, one telling us that we can eat at the caverns.  You can also see one of the many pump rigs we have seen.

When we get to Whites City we turn west on route 7, Carlsbad Cavern Highway.  We begin to see the ruggedness of the countryside and can begin to imagine what the caverns will look like.

Some of the small caves along the cliffs we have seen on our way to the caverns.  You can easily imagine that these were used by ancient people for shelter. 

We are now at the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns and the visitor's center.

Some of the flowers that are still in bloom here at Carlsbad Caverns, I think this one is a Perennial Rockcress.

You can either take the elevator down to the main cavern to begin your tour or start the tour by entering the “bat” cave or travel a couple of miles through other caves and caverns to the main cavern room.  The Bat cave is where the bats come out in the evening to catch dinner. 

Beginning the mile plus hike to the main cavern begins with a steep drop (there were several drops actually) as you can see from the pictures.  These caverns are huge, miles long, wide and high.

From inside the cavern entrance looking back up the way we just came down. 

Not in the cavern for very long, we come to a number of formations like these two pillars.  

Some of the formations have been given names.  This one is called the Whales Mouth.  You can see the resemblance to the baleen mount of some whales.

Now we are going even deeper into the cave system.  Here we must go down another 8 switchbacks before getting to the walkway on the bottom. 

Here’s Carmen in one of the passageways between caverns.  Carmen knew she would be cold, so she is wearing her insulated shirt.

This is a group of stalactites, icicle-shaped formations, hanging from the ceiling of the cave roof.  Scenes like this have become commonplace in the cave system.  

We have reached the “Big Room” and make our way to the restrooms.  Also located here is the elevator that will return us to the surface and the snack shack.  You can see from the map that the end of the cavern is still a little over ½ miles away. 

There are many formations in the cavern, too many to show in this blog.  But, some like these are great to look at.

Some of the formations we’ve seen that kind of “run” down along the wall.  This picture is a little blurry, but I wanted to show different formation.

In one of the “rooms” you get a sense of the size of this place. 

We came to another of the large rooms with formations, here with columns. 

Some of the “ribbon” formations located in the cavern.

Formations take on all kinds of shapes, stalactites, stalagmites, ribbons, and columns all can be seen here at this location.

We came upon these two huge columns.  For the column to get fat like this on the bottom there must be more water than usual dripping from the ceiling.

We finally take the elevator back up to the surface rising 754 feet or 75 stories.  Up on the surface we can see quite a distance from the top of the mesa we are on.

Here a lone Ocotillo (I think that is the name for this plant) dessert plant looks over the other plants near the welcome center.

We head back to the campground and settle in for the night.  Shortly after getting back to the campground we were treated to this sunset.  Tomorrow we leave for Big Bend National Park in Texas.