Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
We spent the day exploring this truly one of a kind National Park. It is hard to impossible to describe this place and the pictures do not do it justice. Carlsbad Caverns is a series of 32 miles of underground caves, some as big as 14 football fields and hundreds of feet high. I felt like I was in some kind of crazy science fiction movie set...but it was real!
After arriving we hiked down over a mile into the caves...descending over 850 feet. It was very surreal. I was a little nervous at first, but quickly got used to being underground and away from all natural light.
Every summer they have a natural bat flight program each night where hundreds of bats come out of this hole and hunt in mass. They have flown south to Mexico at this time of year. It would have been neat and SCARY to see!
The rest of the pictures just show a small sample of what it is like underground. So many different types, shapes and kinds of rock formations. We went on a ranger guided tour to a huge area called the Kings Palace. It was unbelievable. For a couple of minutes they turned off all the lights and we were in pure, pitch blackness and silence. WOW...that was so weird.
We are staying at Brantley Lake for an extra night as this area is expecting high winds and possible rain or snow today. Not good weather for pulling a 10,000 pound fifth wheel. So we will head to Texas tomorrow after a relaxing day here for school and catching up on projects (hopefully some reading too!).
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