In the Bat Cave with my Baby

 

Double the trouble, double the fun!

I mentioned that we had arranged to meet up with our daughter Randi and her boyfriend, Jose, to visit Carlsbad Caverns. We arrived on Monday, 4/10, at the Carlsbad RV Park and spent the next couple days doing repairs (the slide!), maintenance, laundry, dog baths, and other housekeeping chores. I was walking Raney in the campground when a gal in a pickup pulled up next to us and asked if she was a mastiff. Yep. Then she excitedly told me that she had one too, a brindle about the same age as Raney, and was also staying at the RV park. And that is how we met Andrea and Tonka. Sometimes serendipity is a sweetheart.

We met up in the largest of the RV’s dog parks for play time pretty much every day and sometimes more than once. They did zoomies and chased each other and then Raney would act coy and hide behind a bench, only to run another lap with Tonka in pursuit. He was the absolute sweetest boy, just a couple weeks younger than Raney, and so similar in coloring and size that it was hard to tell them apart after dusk. I am so glad Raney found a friend to help expend some of that puppy energy.

Raney (rear) and Tonka (front). 
Hard to tell them apart during their evening play sessions.

Look at these goof bugs!

A game of chase. Who's at the gate? And the handsome Tonka.

The kids (Ok, Jose is 42 and Randi will turn 34 in July, but she’ll always be my baby!) checked into their hotel Wednesday evening. After a 7+ hour drive, they were ready to crash so we agreed to meet them Thursday morning, 4/13, for breakfast. Their hotel was right next door to an IHOP, not fancy but it’s hard to screw up pancakes. Lol.  

We had breakfast and made our plans for the weekend. We were doing Carlsbad Caverns on Friday and decided to visit the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park on Saturday. They would be leaving Sunday, so that left Thursday as a free day. Randi, Jose and I decided to check out the thrift shops and the one antique mall in Carlsbad. Both my girls like to thrift and do estate and garage sales. Even Jose has caught the bug. Yes, I am a bad influence. 😊  Rog has no interest whatsoever in pawing through other people’s old stuff (sigh), so he volunteered to do the grocery shopping and make salmon for dinner. A tasty consolation. Lol. We also exchanged the last of our Christmas gifts. Due to a series of flight cancellations, we never got together around the holidays. I had accumulated two whole boxes of the Royal Albert Country Roses china that Randi collects and didn’t trust it would arrive undamaged if I shipped it. They brought welcome treats from Texas too, including our favorite jerky and jalapeno blueberry jam from Buc-ees (A Texas institution, think combo 7-11/travel center on a massive dose of steroids).

An after dinner stroll around the campground.

Friday, 4/14, we drove to Carlsbad Caverns. For those interested in visiting, even the self-guided tour now requires entry tickets that designate a 1-hour window for you to begin your tour. The tickets are only $1 each and there’s no time limit once you’re checked in, but it helps them control the flow through the caverns. There are also Ranger led tours, but those are much more limited in size and were sold out when I checked.  

Jose and Randi.

We started in the Visitor’s Center, always a good idea. The scale model of the caverns in relation to the visitor’s center really put things into perspective! Carlsbad Caverns has about 30 miles of mapped caves. We also learned about the nearby Lechuguilla Cave, discovered when cavers exploring Carlsbad Caverns removed a rock plug. It has amazing crystal formations and has over 140 miles mapped with more being discovered. However, the stunning photographs are only a tease, access to Lechuguilla is limited to research and exploration only. Bummer.

Scale model of the caverns, note the visitor's center above.

Stunning crystal formations in Lechuguilla Cave.
On-line Photo credit: Paul D. Stewart

We decided to enter Carlsbad through the natural entrance. There are three tour options. There is a 1.25-mile self-guided route that winds through the 8.2-acre Big Room passing many of the caverns most famous features. The elevator from the Visitor Center descends directly to the Big Room 750 below. The Natural Entrance route is a self-guided 1.25-mile tour that follows the original cave explorer’s path. The Natural Entrance route also descends over 750 feet following a series of steep, narrow switchbacks and ends at the Big Room. Of course, we decided to do both! Down through the Natural Entrance trail, around the Big Room and then back up in the elevator. The third option, a Ranger led tour through King’s Palace cavern takes 1.5 hours. Probably for the best that the Ranger led tour was sold out, we spent about four hours in the caverns as it was.

The Natural Entrance - 1.25 mile trail descends 750 feet to the Big Room.

We walked past the amphitheater where visitors can watch the evening exodus of hundreds of thousands of bats. Sadly, we were too early in the year to see the bat flight. As many as seven species of bats inhabit the caverns, but by far the most prevalent are the Brazilian free-tailed bats. Between 200,000 and 500,000 inhabit the caves during the summer months. The young are born in June and cling to their mothers or the ceiling for the next 4-5 weeks. During the day, mothers and pups hang in clusters with as many as 300 bats crowding into one square foot! When mom returns at dawn after consuming more than half her body weight in insects, she finds her own pup in the teeming masses by location and its scent and the sound of its cry. Amazing. Seeing the evening bat flight is still on my bucket list!

Some day I will be here for the evening bat flight!

But we did see lots and this time I have the pictures to prove it. Lol. No restrictions at Carlsbad on photography so I took hundreds. I promise to only include a fraction, but it’s so hard to choose!  Every twist and turn in the trail revealed another breath-taking scene. The park does a good job with lighting, accenting specific formations, but still keeping the cave dim. Too much light promotes algae growth, and you can see in a few places where that has happened. Several of the more spectacular formations are named and accompanied by an informational sign board, but much of the time you are just wandering slowing along the trail awestruck by nature’s artistry.

Flowstone creates formations that look like stone trees.

Randi and Jose take photos in the dim cave.
The formation on the left is called the Whale's Mouth.

Lion's Tail formation.

One of our favorites. We thought it looked like a dragon!

The three tallest towers in the caverns.

Iceberg Rock, weighing 200,000 tons, fell from the ceiling about 513,000 years ago. 

In 1924, early cave explorers used sticks and fence wire to make ladders. Nope.

One of the most mind-boggling aspects of the caves is the time involved in their creation. The history of Carlsbad Caverns begins 265 million years ago when the area was a 400-mile-long reef that stretched along an inland sea. Over the eons the earth shifted, the sea dried up, compression created limestone, which in turn was converted by sulfuric acid to gypsum which dissolved creating the caverns. (That was the Readers Digest version.) The decorative formations which are the real draw began forming 500,000 years ago. Water seeping through the ground formed a weak acid that dissolved a little of the limestone and formed calcite. Once a drop of calcite-laden water emerged into the cave, the water evaporated leaving a tiny calcite crystal behind. If the water dripped slowly soda straws and stalactites grew. Faster falling water created stalagmites. Draperies hang where water flowed down a slanted ceiling and (my favorite!) flowstone formed when the water flowed over the surface of the rock depositing layers of calcite. Cave pearls, lily pads, and rimstone dams formed where water occurred in the cave. We got to see examples of all these exquisite formations and many more.

We loved the huge rooms of fantastical formations, but...

...the details, colors, and crystals were also facinating.

Mirror Lake.

Cave bacon and draperies flowing from a crack in the ceiling.

Although water levels are low, there are still streams and pools.

Crystal Spring Dome is the largest active (still growing) stalagmite in the cavern.
A rare type of bell canopy is visible at its base. 

Doll's Theater.

Ok, last cave picture, I promise! 
But I couldn't resist the trees and the little pacman ghosts are just adorable. Lol.

After a long day in the caverns, we met for dinner at the Guadalupe Brewing Co for pizza and our beverage of choice. We ended up eating out far more often than we normally do, but we found some great little restaurants in Carlsbad. The Blue House for breakfast and pastries was a hit, the food was good and the porch kitty was a charmer. Mexican restaurants were everywhere, and we found two that we would highly recommend. El Charro got a well-deserved solid 5-star rating on Yelp and Mariscos El Buchon for fresh Mexican seafood was excellent.

We ate way too much and enjoyed every bite! 😄

On Saturday, 4/15, we stayed above ground and visited the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens State Park. It’s a lovely stroll through desert landscaping with animal enclosures. My favorite was the prairie dog town, their antics were just hilarious. They also had a greenhouse with “Succulents of the World”, but I swear it was well over 100° in there! There was even a sign outside saying the temperatures inside could be extreme and use discretion. Not for me, it far exceeded my very narrow comfort zone. Lol.

Gypsum Hills.
Seeing a lot of that in New Mexico!

Roadrunner, Javelina, and Mr. Bear.

The Prairie Dogs were so entertaining.

Randi and Jose.

These may thrive in extreme heat. I'll pass.

In the afternoon Rog and Jose went to the gun show. Luckily nothing followed them home. But after dropping Rog back at the RV, Jose picked Randi up at the hotel and they went back. The magpies ended up with some custom-made knives. Beautiful and functional works of art.

Pretty and practical. What a nice souvenir of their visit.

Randi and Jose left early Sunday morning. We met them for breakfast again at IHOP, then hugged them both and sadly sent them on their way. It was so much fun to see them and do the caverns together. Jose had never been in a cave before and Randi had never seen anything as extensive as Carlsbad Caverns, so it was a special time.

Rog and I weren’t leaving until the next day, so we took the puppers to Carlsbad’s Riverwalk Park. It’s a lovely, paved path along both sides of the Pecos River. The nicest picnic and play areas are not pup-friendly, but we found a fishing access with a little boat ramp at one end where Riley and Raney could get their feet wet.

Riley is in his happy place. Lol.

After one final play session with Tonka early Monday (4/17) morning, we pulled out in hopes of scoring a spot at a boondocking site near Corona, NM. And score we did, but that’s all in the next post. 😊