Carlsbad Caverns National Park

This morning we finally got back to Carlsbad Caverns.  Our campground is just about a quarter mile from the entrance to the park, but the Visitor Center and Cavern entrance is another 6 miles down (I should say up) the road.  The landscape is much the same as we have seen since we left Big Bend—Chihuahuan Desert.  Gene and I both feel like it is a little greener here and we attribute that greenness to the juniper trees which we did not see farther south.

Entrance to the cave

The real feature of this park is the cavern itself.  We did the “Big Room” self-guided tour which started at the entrance and followed a paved path 750 feet below the surface to the largest limestone “room” in the western hemisphere.  It took about an hour to get to the Big Room with lots of stops on the way to look around and take photos.

Once at the bottom, we took a little break with a cup of coffee from the small snack bar.

Back on the “trail”, we toured the “big room” which also took about an hour for the 1.2 mile walk. We saw some amazing stalactites and stalagmites.  We took the easy way out and road the elevator back to the surface.

I was pretty pleased with the photographs overall.  I did not take the tripod just because I didn’t want to fool with it.  The chambers were lit with incandescent lights which made the photos a little redder than what the true color was.  My little flash was not up to this dim lighting, so everything is really out of focus because I could not hold the camera steady for such a long shutter speed.  In the picture of Gene you can really tell how out of focus it is, but for the cave shots you don’t notice it so much.

Tomorrow we are moving up to Roswell.  Maybe we’ll see some aliens.