We left Fort Stockton after only a one night stay. The route to Carlsbad Caverns National Park was TX 285 through Pecos, TX and on to Whites City, NM. Although not an Interstate, 285 was a good road through some desolate country.
There were no rest areas and we were finding it hard to even find a wide spot in the road to pull off and have lunch. We finally spotted one in time to pull off and after sitting there a few minutes I noticed we were just shy of the New Mexico line. This view told us everything we wanted to know about the way forward.
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| The 7 mile drive to the visitors center is quite picturesque. |
Here's some pictures from around the cave entrance ...
This campground has an interesting arrangement. Every two sites share a permanent shelter, so you're kind of forced to make friends with your neighbor. Ours happened to be a couple and their son from... Florida, it's a small world! They arrived the day we were in the cavern so that afternoon we filled them in on the bat viewing and what we learned while down in the cavern.
By the way, the pictures to the right aren't ours, they're off the internet. No electronics (cameras, cell phones, etc.) are allowed in the viewing area during the bat flight. The signals given off by these devices interfere with the bats echo location senses. I suppose if you had an old purely manual film camera, that would be OK but I didn't have one and I didn't ask.
5/10
We were up early to get to the meeting point for the 9:00am Kings Palace Tour at the restaurant area near the bottom of the cavern. Here's some pictures we took on the way down...
We were almost late because we got lost, we read a sign wrong and took a wrong turn!
As the Ranger began her presentation, she said we'd be going down another 8 stories. Already concerned about the climb out, I thought maybe we should skip the tour because of the extra depth, but we soldiered on. The start of the tour headed back up the main trail before we started descending down again into the Kings Palace.
Here we stopped while the Ranger described the different shapes of stalactites (from the roof down) and stalagmites (from the floor up) and why they developed their distinct and varied shapes.
At one point during the tour the ranger was describing the first known explorer of the caverns, James White, and the home made tools he used. For light he used and oil lamp and for a ladder he used wooden rungs held together with bailing wire.To dramatize the effect, she lit a single flame then turned out the lights to show how James White saw the caverns for the first time. During one of his excursions, the oil lamp ran out of oil and he was thrust into total darkness, our flame was extinguished and we were sitting in total darkness. She goes on to describe how he must have felt, thinking this could become his final resting place. Luckily, he was able to re-light his lantern and find his way out. Next time he brought extra oil!
We always try to take at least one ranger led tour.
The experience is so mush richer with the information and antidotes they share.
Here's some links to more history...
Cavern's Chronology
Cave History Update (2004)
James Larkin White - Wikipedia
Apparently the climb down was more strenuous than we thought it would be, we had striped down to the first of our three layers. By the end of the tour, we had all three layers back on and were quite cool. Some hot chocolate at lunch sure would be nice.
After the tour we decided to have an early lunch at the "Restaurant" (you're not allowed to bring food into the caverns). The "Restaurant" is a collection of ready made sandwiches and salads along with the usual collection of tee shirts and souvenirs. For ready made, the sandwiches were pretty good, and the cookies we had for desert were great...but NO HOT CHOCOLATE, no hot anything! Did we mention it's 57 degrees down there.
After lunch we headed into The Big Room, the self guided tour is an essentially a flat trail around the perimeter. The scale is hard to get you head around, or describe. Here's a quote from the web site...
At about 8.2 acres in size, roughly 6.2 football fields would fit into
the Big Room! It is definitely well-named as this is the largest single
cave chamber by volume in North America.
A word about lighting. The new "warmer" LED lighting system was turned on December 2015. Prior to that the lights were mostly "cool" florescent tubes. A "warm, soothing" light is shifted to the yellow or red side of the spectrum while a "cool, harsh" light tends to be more blue. See the cool florescent lighting in the Restaurant pictures above compared to the "warm" lighting in the caverns.
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| Notice walkway in lower center |
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| Looking up at Liberty Dome |
After completing our tour around the Big Room and many hours below ground, it was time to start climbing out.
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| Looking up on the climb out |
In the roof of the chamber hundreds of feet above (center left), there's a misty atmosphere.
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| Looking down during the climb out |
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| Passing the Bat Cave on the way out |
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| A glimmer of light... |
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| Bathed in sunlight |
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| Joan takes a break after a long hike out |
The climb out, while strenuous, wasn't a bad as we thought. Taking a lot of breaks, we made it out in about 1 1/2 hours.
Coming next, Deming NM and the oasis in the desert
1 comment:
Great post. I relived a part of my visit. Since Donna wasn't with me I didn't go into the cave, saving that for a followup with her along. You were probably smart to take 285. My GPS routed me on 176 off of I-20 at Big Spring. It was a longer distance through New Mexico and a real and bumpy adventure. I passed a remote bus stop that said handicapped accessible. It was a park bench very close to the road and in large white rock. No way I could see to get a wheel chair through there. But it must have been a success as it gave the government one more example of providing for those in need. They must like the statistic, not really helping. I also loved the geological history of the Guadalupe mountains.
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