We have enjoyed our stay in Albuquerque and our time visiting Santa Fe and northern New Mexico. It’s time for us to move south as the weather is steadily below freezing in the mornings. Our next destination is Carlsbad NM, 275 miles down a lonely road with no civilization. No towns, no gas stations, just a long stretch of desert two lane road. The drive was awesome!
Carlsbad is an oil and gas town with the surrounding area encompassed with refract natural gas facilities and lots of oil wells. I was expecting a much more desert town with lots of historical old town sites. That town no longer exist.
The reason for us to be here is the Carlsbad Cavern National Park. It’s something that I have on my bucket list for a very long time. We are here and it’s time to go down under!
The recommended public entrance to the cavern is to take the elevator down 800 feet to the common area of the caverns. At the bottom there is a cafe, bathrooms and entrance area to the public access of the caverns. Two and half miles away is the Natural Entrance which requires a rigorous hike through the caves to get to the cafe area. There are Ranger Guided caving that require helmets, knee pads and head lanterns. Those were 5 hours long. We decided to take the elevator down and do our own self guided tour. We were pretty much to ourselves since it was the off season. Denise and I were up to the challenge of wandering around the cavern into a very dark space by ourselves if the lights go out. We really enjoyed our time exploring!
It was a bad day for photography. I try my best to capture the moment but my technical ability for dark space photos needs much improvement. The Youtube video captures our wandering in the dark.
Another great adventure for the 2GoWandering!
Very brave young man! Hopefully somebody knew you guys are going groundhogging down there before you started your journey :-). We continue to enjoy your stories, thank you for sharing Cris and Pam fredericksen
Good to hear from you, Cris!
I almost jumped out of my chair at 4 am when I turned off the mute button on your video. CLARINET MUSIC. Your scenes of climbing the dark stairs could be incorporated into a horror film….interesting journey in the dark. You might pick up some plastic bones and leave some along the trail if you return.
That’s a great ideal,Richard. I’ll bring the bones next time. Love to see the reaction.