Carlsbad Caverns

I drove to the city of Carlsbad and made use of the local Planet Fitness to shower and freshen up before heading to the caverns, which are South of town.

The park entrance ticket I got online yesterday had a 10:30 am to 11:30 am window, and my ranger-led tour started at noon. I thought the entrance ticket was the time you could enter the park, but it is actually the time you can enter the cave for your self-guided walking tour. I didn't think I would have time to walk around the caves before my tour, so I opted to wander around the museum and look at the exhibits until my tour started. It turns out that you can come and go into the caves as often as you like after your reserved entry time, but the last allowed entry is 2:30 pm and you have to be out of the cave system by 4:45 pm.

You can enter the cave system via an elevator that descends 750 feet to the main area, or you can enter through the natural cave entry and descend by foot on paved walking paths with handrails. I took the elevator down to the starting point t of my ranger-led tour, took the elevator back to the top after the tour, and then went to the natural cave opening and descended to the main floor again as part of my self-guided walking tour.

The cave system is amazingly huge... and I'm just talking about the part we are allowed to walk through! There are other known and unexplored areas that we don't get to see. I was glad I signed up for the 90 minute "Kings Palace" ranger-led tour. The ranger took us to 4 beautiful rooms that you don't get to see on the self-guided tour.

The self-guided tour also took me about an hour and a half of solid walking from the natural cave opening down to the loop self-guided loop walkway on the main level (about 750 feet below ground), so there was a lot to see.

Here are photos of the natural  cave entrance, the switchbacks leading into the cave,  and the view looking back up at the entrance from below.

Looking down, you can see the trail and handrails continuing into the distant depths.

The original discoverer of the caves used a makeshift ladder made of sticks and barbed wire to enter and explore the cave. He was a brave soul.

Water still seeps into the caves. Here is a reflecting pool.

The paths, handrails, and periodic signs made the self-guided tour a good experience.

The cave temperature was somewhere in the 50s. It was a shock to get back outside in the hot, dry, shadeless Chihuahua desert. The outside temperature shown on my  car dashboard was 116 degrees, but that was due to sitting in the parking lot. After I started driving the reported temperature dropped to 106.

The city of Carlsbad is about a half hour drive North of the visitor center and I had worked up an appetite, so I drove North for some good Mexican food.

Thousands of Brazilian bats live in the depths of Carlsbad Caverns. Some are migratory and others hibernate in the caves during the winter. Regardless, in the springtime they fly out in search of food during the evenings. This type of bat likes to eat moths. They usually stay out all night and return before dawn. The ranger said sometimes a bat will return to the same cave and other times it will go to a different cave. If it is a mother with a pup (baby bat), though, it always goes back to its pup.

The park has an amphitheater near the main cave opening, and the rsngers hold a program in the evenings, waiting for the bats fly out. Cell phones and photography are not allowed and you have to be quiet to keep from disturbing the bats. It was fun to watch the bats fly and flap their wings. They would fly out of the cave, circle around, and take off in search of food. I was surprised they didn't stay close to the ground, but the ranger said the moths they like to eat also fly pretty high. The length of one of the wings of these bats is about the same length as an adult human's hand from wrist to fingertip.

Bat trivia: 

1. Bats have to continuously flap their wings when they fly. They can't glide like birds because they are too heavy. Bird bones are hollow, but bat wings are not, so they are heavier. 

 2. Bat's feet are clenched when their muscles are relaxed, which comes in handy when bats hang from the ceiling. It takes muscle power to unclench their feet and release their grip.

I asked a ranger this morning for suggestions on dispersed camping, and he told me the Sunset Reef campground was the best in the area, so I headed there after the bat program. I had scouted out the campground earlier in the day, so I knew what to expect when I got there after dark.