On April 12 we spent the night at an RV park in Carlsbad. This park was right on the river, which has a great walking/bike path. We rode along the path that evening and enjoyed the sunset.
On the morning of the 13th, before we went to the caverns, we headed out to the Carlsbad Living Desert Museum. Interesting flora and fauna made this a great stop. Debbie especially liked the sleeping bobcat and the badger.
Later, we moved to White's City, near the caverns. This is one of many towns out west that appear to be named after the family that owns the land. White's City has a motel, RV park, gas station, museum, and place to eat. We saw several deer in the campground at dusk.
We were at Carlsbad Caverns on April 13 & 14. The caverns are wonderful and COOL! After a very warm spring, it was a joy to enter a place that's always about 50 degrees. It's hard to get good photos in the caverns, because it's really dark and most of the more interesting formations are too far away for the flash. But we got a few decent shots.
One thing that intrigued us was that there are bathrooms, a gift shop, and a snack bar on the cavern floor, many hundreds of feet below the surface of the ground. It must have been quite an accomplishment to get the plumbing down there.
We didn't take any of the guided hikes, so we didn't get to experience total darkness. We were also a little early in the season for the bat flights. But we did see a sign that caught our attention. There was one seemingly bottomless pit with an old, unsubstantial wire & wood ladder disappearing into it. The sign told us that the explorers in 1923 were uneasy about dangling over a deep pit on this little ladder. Well, yeah…
This photo was taken at the walk-in entrance to the cavern. (That's as opposed to the ride-down-on-the-elevator entrance to the cavern.) As we were walking down the trail we noticed several people looking into the bushes. They said there was a rattlesnake in there, and although Debbie did hear a few rattles, we didn't get close enough to see the snake. Coming up in the elevator, a man asked the ranger what it means when a rattlesnake rattles. Debbie said, "Don't come any closer." Everyone laughed.
We also drove the loop trail, which was a gravel road that wound through the
park. It was slow, dusty, and hot, but it was scenic. One interesting thing
we saw was two people heading out for a back-country hike wearing shin guards.
We puzzled about that until we saw the name of the trail they were headed for:
the Rattlesnake Canyon Trail. We decided that the shin guards were one of those
things the locals won't be without but the tourists would never think of.