Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM, USA

After finishing our time with NMD, and loading emily's things into her car, we took the long way home. Our first stop was Carlsbad Caverns NP, about 4 hours east of El Paso, TX. The Carlsbad cave network is one of the largest and the system is probably most famous for its immense chambers--the largest houses a 1.5 mile loop trail around its periphery. The neat thing about the cave is that one can enter via the first discovered natural entrance and wind down into its cool interior (about 60 degrees F) from the hot Chihuahuan desert above.


looking back toward the natural entrance

I imagine the best way to describe the features of the cave is via pictures, so here goes. These are all from our walk into the cave and explorations of the big room.


the plankton filtering teeth of "the whales head"


emily and an unnamed feature


looking out into a part of one of the larger chambers--I should note that all these shots were taken on my 50mm prime lens since it is my fastest, but as such I was unable to get really wide angle shots of the interior. The place was enormous.


this tower was more than 2 meters in diameter and spanned from the floor to ceiling--maybe 15 meters in height


taken from across the big room, shows a bit of the size--the ceiling here was at least 100 feet high


neat curtains on the ceiling

We also took a ranger led tour into the "lower room," which is only accessible via a series of ropes and ladders (not chutes). It was alot of fun, but the ranger told us leaving cameras behind was a good idea given the squeezes we would be going through. I've taken my camera to some risky places, so I'm not sure why I didn't just bring it regardless. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to show from this helmet/headlamp expedition into less-explored realms of the cave. We escaped the crowds with our smaller group and had fun caving.

That night we hiked into the backcountry of the park (permits were free--the right price) and camped in the desert. The heat was quite a contrast.

The next day we would drive to Roswell, NM such that we might tour the international UFO museum there (their webpage, you should go) and then pass for Albequerque. There I got to met Emily's good friend Judy and her husband Keith, with whom we had dinner and spent the night (they were great).