Carlsbad caverns natural entrance

Today we headed out to Carlsbad caverns. On the way into the park, I spotted a Barby sheep. In the second picture see if you can spot the sheep, he blends in so well with the desert. Pictures three and four are a close-up of him.

To get into the cave, you can either descend via the natural entrance or take the elevator. We decided to take the natural entrance. The Natural Entrance Trail is 1.25 miles and is known for its steep descent and ascent, gaining or losing about 750 feet in elevation.

Seeing all the switchbacks from the opening of the cave was pretty unique and pretty cool. As we were descending the switchbacks, we saw lots of swallows flying around. They look just like the bats do that fly out of the cave. They circle the entrance of the cave and then take off. The national parks calls the swallows the dayshift they live just inside the cave and come out during the day to eat bugs while the bats live deep inside the cave and only come out at night.

In the second to the last picture is a map of the two trails the natural entrance trail, which is on the left side of the map and goes all the way down to that red dot. All of the trails to the right of that red dot is just the big room inside the cave. I’ll discuss that portion in the next post but this gives you some perspective on how big that big room is compared to the natural entrance trail

The last picture is the bat amphitheater. We did come back at night to see the bats, but the group of bats that were in the cave they believe are just a migrating colony. They are not the usual Brazilian bats that live in the cave throughout the summer. During the bat flight, you cannot have any electronics at all on. You have to turn off your cell phone so no photos. Which kind of stinks because it was so cool to see. We sat in the amphitheater for about 20 minutes before the bat started to leave the cave. Once the bats started to leave the cave, it was a steady stream of bats flying out for at least 30 minutes. It was amazing! Additionally, it was almost a full moon, and the bats all flew out, kinda towards the moon, so it was like the perfect Halloween scene with the moon almost full, and the bats just streaming across it. It was really the coolest thing.Read more