So as mentioned, last time I went to Carlsbad Caverns, my buddy made us ride the elevator down 750 feet underground. It was less than spectacular. Pay the admission fee, walk around the corner and get into the elevator. A ranger told me I missed the best part by not walking down.
I had only seen photos of the entrance so wasn't exactly sure how cool it would be...but first we had to get there.
The entrance to the park was about 25 miles south of town. Carlsbad has about 10,000 residents so it's not that big and soon we were on open Federal Hwy with a 70mph speed limit (or was it 75, I don't recall) and we made short work of the trip. Tommy made is requisite stop for Instagram.
New car, time to take pics with cool backdrops. We pulled over to take some pictures of sheep on the side of the hill. Those are on Lucy's camera, will add later.
The highway was fairly flat, but as soon as you enter the park, you are in the northern end of the Guadalupe Mountains which is part of a Permian Reef laid down during the
Guadelupian Epoch (272.3–259.8 mya)
Since it was very hilly driving up a canyon, we let the teenager drive to get some 3D driving time in. Yes the windshield is cracked from a TX hailstorm. Had to put the tape up to keep from getting blinded from the sun refracting off the cracks.
The visitor center was not so photo worthy (just a building lol), but if you look beyond the Bat Amphitheater you can see the mouth of the cavern. You sit here to watch the bats fly out at dusk (we did, very cool). Sadly, there were no ranger led tours to encourage social distancing.
At first I was surprised by this very for real sign, but then thought, "Duh, it's a BATCAVE!"
There is my not so baby daughter looking into the maw of the underworld. I can only imagine being the first modern human to come across this....
Switchbacks forever, lol. If you look real close you can see Naya on the very left edge of the photo a few levels down.
From here to the smaller opening, was at least 70-80 feet down. Pictures don't do it justice.
Getting closer to the darkness. During the day there was a ton of
Cave Swallows zipping in and out. They were really fun to watch them fold their wings and just dive bomb into the hole. They nest right near where it gets dark.
As you can see there are not too many people. You had to reserve your time slot in advance and it was limited to 150 per hour. We were late (as usual) and started down around 40-45 min into our window, so there was no one around us for the first half an hour (very nice!).
A side shot showing the little nooks and crannies the birds were nesting in.
After the initial switchbacks the trail runs off to the side a hundred yards or so, before doubling back.
That black gap above Naya's head is about a 40 foot drop that the initial explorers had to overcome to get down into the cavern. it was really cool to see the large shaft of daylight shooting down into the cavern.
I don't recall how far down this shot was, but the daylight soon waned and my phone doesn't do well in low light. It took us about 1.5 hours to get to the bottom. Going to stop here as Lucy took lots of pics with the better camera on the walk down.
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