Carlsbad - the cave

Since we'd visited Karchner Cavern's outside Benson Arizona, we felt obligated to visit Carlsbad's Cavern, too. While the city of Carlsbad doesn't have much natural beauty, the canyon leading in Carlsbad Cavern National Park is a beautiful example of Chihuahuan desert. We decided to descend into the cave using the traditional entrance instead of the elevator. The entrance is huge. We walked down about 750 feet in elevation over the course of a mile.
This cave is huge! Although there is enough light to see on the path down, a small flash light to highlight certain features would come in handy.


Looking back towards the surface, I had the feeling that we were inside looking out from within the eye of the earth.

The 1 mile route into the cave ends where it joins the trail into the big room. Not too far from the junction is where the elevators are. The area includes a snack bar, gift shop and restrooms. Don't believe the bill boards that say you can eat a good meal 750 feet below the surface - they've stopped cooking down there and only offer snacks. Although visited during a fairly slow period, the crowd was large enough to give the cave a Disneyland feel. We toured the Big Room next.


The Big Room is huge, probably the largest known room of this kind in the world. It is awe inspiring, though the people crowding up on us from behind whenever we stopped to look at a feature did detract from my enjoymentIt seems that most of the cave is dry, meaning that it's not actively building formations, though we did see the occasional pool, such as the one shown here.




I think this formation is called the Mouth of the Whale

This pair of stalagmites and stalactites are reaching towards each other. Perhaps one day, if conditions improve, they'll join to form a column.

And that's all from Carlsbad!