A Road Trip – Stop #1 Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

A road-trip that covered 3,000 miles. You can pack a lot into one week and we proved it by doing just that. Now I need a vacation from my vacation!

Seth is getting ready to head to Canada for the next several months as he starts his summer/fall/winter jobs there, just left this morning for Canada so we my hubby decided we really needed to do this family trip before he left. Since I’m just a passenger (no driving for me!) I went along for the ride. 🙂

First off, it was Carlsbad Caverns, a favorite of ours once we went to see it several years ago. This was our third time to visit.

James Larkin White was a cowboy riding along when he saw a large dark cloud in the distance around evening time. Not knowing what it was, he rode closer and discovered it was bats exiting a large hole in the ground. This was in the late 1800’s.

The cave had so much bat guano that it was mined and sent to California to the fruit orchards.

People were amazed by the discovery and the early tourists were lowered by ore buckets down into the mouth of the cave. That sounds like an adventure!

But today you have two choices. There is an elevator that you can take down and back up or you can take the Natural Entrance Trail which is 1 1/4 miles. We like to take this trail and then ride the elevator up. So much easier to go down than up, right? 🙂

So with our little caver buddy, we went to explore a portion of this huge cave.

Descending approximately 79 stories…

 …to an amazing world

of interesting formations.

The cave stays at about 57°F year-round, so it’s pretty cool.

And here is where Russell started playing around with shutter speed. It’s very dimly lit inside, so it was really hard to take photos.

And back on top in the wide open spaces.

Goodbye,  till our next stop at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas