Carlsbad Caverns Ntnl Park

Finally, I can check the box that I visited Carlsbad Caverns. This trip was planned two years ago but I did not make it, then again last year but a vehicle breakdown prevented me from making it.

This year I only just made it and with only hours to spare. It only dawned on me in my reading leading up to the trip that this park would be closed each night. It is not like you can just stroll on into the caves without some form of supervision. This is not like Yellowstone where you can hike a trail or rive a road even when the rangers are off duty. The last allowed trip own to the cavern was 3:30pm and I happened to arrive at 3pm so I rushed into the visitors center to get my normal trinkets (lapel pin for me and sticker for van) and waited for my turn in the elevator.

Elevator? Yep, you have the descend 750 feet down a tight shaft to access the caverns. Though there is the “natural” way, it is a 850 climb down and I simply did not have time to do that. Once below ground an the elevator doors opened, I felt something wrong. I was in the wrong place. This isn’t right… this is a parking garage or a hotel basement. There was a lobby with carpeting, seating, and lights. Where is the cavern? Oh.. threw those doors?

And that is when the size of this place hit me. I’m happy they through your senses off coming out of the elevator. It resets your awe-meter. When you go through the next set of doors, and around a massive rock, you finally get to see just how large this cavern is. In fact, this was still only a fraction of the “Big Room” and it was already big enough to house a jumbo-jet. I walked the 1-mile paved trail that goes around this part of the cavern. Just “this part” was a 1-mile round trip and it was all one large cavern. Think of a bubble, in the middle of rock, the size of 10 football fields. And it was tall too, easily 50-100 feet tall in some places. Some of the formation s were 60-80 feet an they didn’t reach the top. There were pits measuring another couple hundred feet down.

This simply did not compare to the Lehman Caves (Great Basin Ntnl Park, NV) Tim and I visited in 2010. The entire Lehman caves would have fit in half this single cavern. However, there is an important difference between the two caves; Carlsbad Caverns is home to the larges single “room” outside of the cave in Borneo. While it is large, it is not anywhere as prettily decorated as Lehman Caves. Lehman, though smaller,  has a bigger concentration of formations. And while they are not as large either, they are very detailed and impressive. The formations in Carlsbad were huge… so large that it is not easy to fully take in their grandeur… but not as vividly detailed.

I only spent two hours in the park before pulling out to the highway (where there WAS a Verizon connection!) and made up super fit for a tramp; instant-rice, canned chicken, and green-beans all thrown in a single pan and eaten with a few tortillas.