Disclaimer: This post was updated in November 2022, as the original only included 1 photo; the bigger details were written back then, although a few things needed to be figured out.
Up early Saturday morning for the 188-mile (304km) drive that passes through Texas and back into New Mexico.
Welcome to Salt Flat, Texas. This is about all that’s left.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
We reached Carlsbad Caverns quickly enough, and like Jutta’s and my trip here a week ago, a single bat was on the wall to greet us as we entered its domain.
We hoped to enter the cave through the Natural Entrance, which can’t be a given and depends on if my mother-in-law feels she has the stamina. Fortunately for us today, this is how we entered the cave.
Having just photographed the cave a week prior, I wasn’t sure if I would find any new angles to share, but here goes.
While the cave system feels huge, it also feels rather compact as the paved walkway twists and turns so much that you never really know where you are.
The trail is 1.25 miles long with an elevation gain or loss of 750 feet, though somehow it doesn’t feel like that at all, probably because your senses are tuned to taking in as much as possible.
While this cave is astonishing, there’s much gone and broken as when it was first discovered; people didn’t know anything at all about the fragility, age, or health of an ecosystem that might be still evolving in this now mostly dead cave. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy it quite the same without the great lighting and pathways, but it sure would have been great to see and hear the cave while water was still actively forming these ribbons, stalagmites, stalactites, and other formations that boggle the mind.
Like organic creatures, these formations could have been considered lungs, and if you’d told me that, I might have believed you.
After descending about halfway, we detoured from the Big Room so we could make our reservations for the King’s Palace Tour at 3:00 p.m. Finishing the King’s Palace, we re-entered the Big Room to finish the trail we skipped earlier.
What photos came from the main cave area or the King’s Palace are lost to time; suffice it to say that they are all from Carlsbad Caverns.
Just stop and think about this: all of this rock used to be a solid structure until groundwater dripped through the earth, carving out the limestone.
But as where rivers scrape clean the surfaces they run over, these waters leach minerals carrying them along to form what we see here today.
Somewhere in our vicinity is the Lechuguilla Cave system, which is still very much alive but it’s off-limits to all but scientists and park personnel.
With barely enough time to get good seats at the Natural Entrance amphitheater, our explorations ended with us watching the Bat Flight – more than 350,000 bats making their way out of the cave’s Natural Entrance tornado-style for a night of bug munching.
Afterward, we felt like munching on something as well and headed to Carlsbad for dinner at Chili’s, one of the few eateries still open at 9.30 PM.