After leaving at some unearthly hour in the morning, we set out for Carlsbad, New Mexico to see the caverns. Along the way we drove through the west Texas oil plains.
We reached the caverns with time to spare. Which was good, because they were pretty busy. A line to go down into the caverns via elevator put Lucy in a great mood.
But as we started exploring and she started to see all the amazing stalactites, stalagmites, columns, drapes, popcorn, and other formations, she came around.
We were loving it so much that we took the long loop through the main cavern. We were able to look down into what explorers first thought was a bottomless pit, see original ladders to descend to the second level from the early 1900s explorations, visit the "chapel" section, see gypsum rock formations that sparkled under our lights, and, to Lucy's mix of horror and curiosity, learn about the thousands of bats that make the caves their home.
The formations were well-lit, and the path was easy to navigate. Calvin actually fell asleep in my arms the last 20 minutes or so. Which was good, because if we thought the line to take the elevators down was long, well, we hadn't seen anything yet ... about an hour wait to get back up!
Still, we were really glad we went. Carlsbad Caverns = a fantastic part of our trip!
No comments:
Post a Comment