Carlsbad Caverns


Monday, June 10, 2019

Today was a day of exploration like nothing we have ever done before.  Carlsbad Caverns National Park begins in the Chihuahuan Desert (We are actually camping in this desert) at the foot of the Guadalupe Mountains.  We drove 7 miles up into the mountains through the desert landscape.  Our hike took us 750 feet down into a gigantic underground world of strange cave formations.  For 1 ¼ miles we descended into the mountain.  At the 750-foot mark we came upon a cave called the ‘Big Room’.  It is the size of 7 football fields.  The path we took around it was another 1 ¼ miles of the strangest rock formations known to mankind.  An elevator took us back to the surface.

Words cannot describe what we saw and experienced.  The word that was the most common out of our mouths today was “Wow”.  Hopefully the pictures can at least partly tell the story. 

Distance Traveled = 149 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Rabbit, Scaled Quail, Western Kingbird, Blue Grosbeak, Turkey Vulture, Great Tailed Grackle, Bullocks Oriole, Eurasian-collared  Dove, White-winged Dove.


Amphitheater at Carlsbad Caverns


Natural Entrance

Winding Path into Cavern


Natural light almost gone


Stalactites and Stalagmites


Popcorn Formations


Stalactites and Stalagmites


Stalactites and Stalagmites


Drapery Formation


Stalactites


Column Formation


Soon to be a column formation


View from the Visitor Centre


Long and winding road to get to the Visitor Centre.... 7 miles of this!


What the whole area looks like....

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