New Mexico (NM) - 1. The Carlsbad Caverns

John has a MAJOR fascination with caverns full of fossils. For me, the view is similar to the rock and reef formations that you see when you snorkel – except for the fact it’s under the ground. Someone told us, “If you’re going to New Mexico, then you HAVE to see the caverns at Carlsbad – there’s no other place like it.” It’s for this reason that we planned to spend a few days in the southeast corner of NM.

The Guadalupe Mountain National Park straddles the 25 miles stretch of the TX-NM border and, once we crossed into NM, the drive was only about 50 miles to the city of Carlsbad (pop 26,000). The city has its base at another National Park called the Carlsbad Caverns National Park. There, we parked ourselves at the KOA just north of town and got ourselves oriented to the area. Both Parks are situated in the Chihuahuan Desert so just know this – this was definitely cowboy country!

The story of the caverns began millions of years ago with underground river passages. Over the years, the water from the river disappeared except for beads of water that drop from within the caverns. Eventually, the beads develop the ground into strange-looking columns that either rest like a rock or hang like an icicle - like this one:


The caverns create places for bats to rest during the day and there is one natural entrance to the caves where the bats come and go. Many are migratory and I gather most bats call this ‘home, sweet home’ in the summer and fall months. It was in the very late 1800’s when a local guy named Jim White followed a dark cloud of fluttering wings into the side of the mountain and discovered the caves. Being the entrepreneur that he was, he eventually mined the bat ‘guano’ and sold it as fertilizer! Imagine!

It wasn’t long after that Jim decided he could make even more money by making the cave a tourist site. By the early 1900’s, the story goes that Jim was lowering two people at a time via a bucket down into the cave entrance. I can only guess that the smell on the ride down as well as the tour must have been really bad – I mean how much bat guano could a tourist take? Thankfully on our trip, there were four elevators at the surface at the Visitor Center. The elevator took us down 750’ to the cave floor in just shy of a minute – luckily, far, far away from the original and still-existing bat entrance! Not long after you step off the elevator, you proceed to a chamber (room) that is 8.5 acres in size – can you believe it? 8.5 acres underground – amazing!

There are 8 different tours you can take at the Caverns – only two are self-guided. The other six tours are guided by Park Rangers and vary in degree of physical range. How about I give you an overview and then you guess which tour we took? (remember that I’m with a guy who favours both feet on solid ground at all times)…

So here are your choices:

1. the paved one mile walking path to four chambers that includes a (planned) blackout experience followed by an 8-story walk back to the Visitor Center?
2. the lantern-lit tour (lanterns provided) of the formations on a dirt trail with slippery slopes?
3. the ‘moderately strenuous’ event where you lower yourself by knotted ropes followed by a 50’ series of three ladders where you need to bring your own gloves, batteries and kneepads?
4. the tour where it’s mandatory that you bring a heavy duty C-cell battery flashlight and wear a headlamp and special footwear since the route is muddy (which really means slippery) and notes that one path requires a 15’ climb using a knotted rope?
5. the tour to a remote cave deep in the Caverns where it’s mandatory to wear gloves, kneepads, helmets and headlamps (supplied by the Parks Service) and you bring the aforementioned flashlight? or,
6. last but not least, the Spider Cave Tour where you can expect ‘tight crawls’ through small passages to see ‘bizarre’ formations?

OK, OK – so it isn’t that hard to guess which tour we took – it was the first one! Every tour guide worked for the National Park Service and our guide was VERY informative and proud of his tour-guide responsibilities. It was a bit chilly because no matter where you go in the caves, the temperature is 56 degrees. It was very difficult to take photos because of lighting underground so I don’t have many to show you.


But here’s a pic of one of the (shaky) stairways on our tour:















There was a lot of scientific stuff to learn about the rocks and the fossil formations. I was too much in awe of the view to catch all of the detail but I did note the science-type guys and gals didn’t say “awesome” as much as I did. Instead, they used the proper descriptive words like: stalactites, stalagmite, soda straws, draperies, flowstone, column, lily pads, cave pearls, helictites, aragonite crystals, rimstone dams and popcorn. I said, ‘There’s popcorn?” and a gaggle of those scientific-types looked around at me and I’m sure they were creating a blonde joke of some kind. John pretended he didn’t know me.

It was a great day and we spent many more hours there than we ever planned. There are about 100 caves in total with the deepest chamber being 1037’ below the surface. We only visited a few and only went 2/3 of the way down. At the surface, you would never know the caverns existed. The Carlsbad National Park itself is 46,766 acres and it’s amazing to know Jim White just happened to see those bats flying in and out back in the late 1800’s. He’d be proud today to know the Caverns were designated a World Heritage Site in 1995.

Well, I’ve rambled on enough about Carlsbad. What follows next is a wee story about Artesia and Roswell… m.