2006/03 Southwest USA trip (AZ-MN) - Carlsbad Caverns |
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Wednesday February 22nd
We planned to spend the day at Carlsbad Caverns, which are actually about twenty miles south of Carlsbad, 
near Whites City. The cavern entrance is high in the Guadalupe Mountains, and last time we were here in 1988, also in February, we had snowstorms all day. This time it was sunny and warm, but we still wore woolies, as the caverns are still active and usually cool, in the fifties. Last time I took Karen and Joanna down the hiking trail through the natural cave entrance while Sandie took the two little ones down in the elevator. So, this time, we both took the natural entrance trail, 
which drops about 700 feet in a mile to bring us out into the “Big Room”.
I took lots of pictures in the caverns, but the most difficult aspect to convey is their sheer size. From the 
entrance down, the caverns feel as large as a railway terminus or a gigantic cathedral or mosque. The stalagmites are amazingly beautiful but they are also massive, eight stories high in some cases. On the way down, the trail winds around the Iceberg Rock, a rock that fell from the 
ceiling thousands of years ago, and it’s so big that we spent about twenty minutes just walking around it. Most of the time we had the trail to ourselves, as the majority of visitors take the elevators.
The Big Room is miles long and hundreds of feet high, and it is busier as it gets all the traffic from the elevator too, 
but, again, we had sections completely to ourselves. The traffic in February is far less than the park gets in the summer.
We felt like we were in a movie set for the Lord of the Rings, with soaring ceilings, intricate grottos, and great columns reaching above us. Carlsbad is the most amazing cave we’ve ever been down; it has the size and the beauty, and it is one of the easiest to negotiate: no crawling required!
There’s a café of sorts down in the Big Room, but the staff aren’t allowed to cook for fear that the fumes would contaminate the caves, so all they serve is food that can be microwaved. This doesn’t of course mean that it can be eaten with a smile. Next time we’ll pack our own.