We made the short drive up from El Paso last night and stayed at Walmart. We had an entire section of the parking lot to ourselves with the exception of a few stray cats that the girls coaxed in with food. James and Zach had a hot sauce eating contest during dinner. They both consumed about 20 drops of hot sauce on a single chip at one shot before mom and dad called the contest a tie. These are the kinds of things you do to entertain yourself when you’ve got 9 people crammed into an RV for the night in the Walmart parking lot. If this sounds like fun, buy an RV and hit the road.
We headed out early this morning to Carlsbad Caverns. I had been eyeing this destination since we left home and the gang in El Paso highly recommended it. We weren’t disappointed. There is a 1 mile walk down through the natural opening of the cave that takes you 750 feet below the surface through a variety of “rooms” and passages. In places it seems like the trail is almost straight down with switchbacks literally carved into the side of the cavern walls. Incredibly cool.
Evidently Carlsbad isn’t the biggest or longest cave system in the world but is known for being highly decorated. There are amazing rock formations of all sorts throughout the entire cave primarily caused by water leaching into the cave for who knows how long. Some of these formations look like icicles of rock – others like rock waterfalls. Then there are the countless stalagmites and stalactities. Surprisingly the cave was a comfortable 70 degrees. During the summertime there are thousands of bats that live in the cave- not the part open to visitors - and they create quite a spectacle when they come out to feed in a “mass ascension” each evening. I was thankful that the National Park Service has upgraded access to the cave since the 1920’s. At that time cave tourists were loaded into guano mining buckets – yes this does imply that they mine bat crap – who knew - and lowered them into the cave.
While here the kids did the Junior Ranger program that most of the National Parks have available to visitors. They each got a book and completed a number of lessons about the cave system. When we returned to the visitor center they got a cool patch. This program doesn’t cost any money once you’ve got tickets to the park and keeps the kids engaged during the visit. We all loved Carlsbad Caverns. I’d highly recommended a visit for anyone visiting the desert southwest.
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| Natural opening to the cave. The amphitheatre is used to view the bats as they come out to feed in the evening. |
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| Descending into the cave. |
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| They call this formation a Lion's Tail. |
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| James and Zach entertaining all of us with a hot sauce eating competition. |
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