Wednesday AM, 2 April

We actually set an alarm for this morning to make sure we got up and on the move to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  It was about 40 minutes from our motel and opened at 8AM and we were there!  We have our “Senior Passes” for National Parks so us old folks get in for free.  We double checked on the Ranger guided tours and there were two spots available so we took them.

They don’t open the cavern until 8:30 and we entered by the “Bat Cave”.  They actualy have an amphitheater at the entrance where people can watch bats leave the cave at dusk.The bats ‘winter’ in Mexico, so we didn’t get to see them.  It took us a little over an hour to walk over mile and descend 850 feet below the surface.

 

There was a gift shop and food service area where we waited for our guided tour of the “Kings Palace”.  That took another hour and half.

We finished with another hour and half waking tour of the ‘Big Room’ which is single cavern covering 8.2 acres.  When we finished, we got to take and elevator to the surface where we were blinded by sunlight and glad to be out of the 56 degree, 90% humidity of the caverns.

We drove back to town and decided to head toward Alamogordo.