Carlsbad Caverns, NM

Today we visited Carlsbad Caverns, and it was an other-worldly experience. We opted for the mile walk down from the Visitor's Center to the natural main entrance. It was a lot of switchback path that slowly winds down to the huge cave entrance. Once inside, the main attraction is the Big Room full of all the different rock formations, stalagmites, stalactites, popcorn stalagmites, transparent pools of water that forms from drips of water filtered through the overhead rock. It is next to impossible to describe how quiet, dimly lit and full of formations that you have never seen anywhere else on the planet. We did not take the shortcut and walked the entire path through the cavern - about a mile and a half, stopping all the time to read the signs and take in each new and interesting type of formation.
After the tour through the caverns, we did take the elevator back up. It was just over 800 feet, or 70 stories.
In the afternoon, there was a ranger scientist lead bat discussion to educate us on the way the bats live in the caverns, what they eat, how they hibernate. We were able to see 3 different types of live bats up close. One was the same type of bats that live in Carlsbad and also under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin.
Our last event was a viewing of the nightly bat viewing as the exit the caverns to forage and eat during the night.Read more