In order to tour Carlsbad Caverns, you must reserve your tickets in advance, online. The reservation fee is $1.00. Half an hour before your designated time, you can pick up your tickets at the visitors center. If you have an America the beautiful pass, there is no additional charge. If you don’t, I believe it’s an additional $15.
They have a nice exhibit and video that you can watch before, or after you tour the cave. We both thought these two exhibits was very interesting to show how far underground the cave extends. They both show the visitors center above ground and the cave below.
There are two ways that you can enter Carlsbad Caverns. The first is by taking one of two elevators about 750 feet down below the visitors center. This option will take about an hour and a half to explore the cave. The other is to enter the cave at the natural entrance by the bat flight amphitheater. This option will take about two and a half hours to explore the cave because you walk all the way down inside the cave, which takes about an hour. We chose to walk in via the natural entrance. The next pictures were taken on our walk in, so anyone who takes the elevator will miss this portion of the cave.
When you reach the bottom, you find yourself at the beginning of the “Big Room” which is the main tour area. There are signs here for the snack shop and restrooms if you need either of those before you start the big room tour. It was mind blowing to me that this was down in the cave.
The next set of pictures are the big room tour.
This picture reminds me of Yellowstone and the iridescent pools you see there.
Of course, these pictures are just a tiny sample of what you would see at Carlsbad Cavern, and my camera and I certainly don’t do it justice, but hopefully they make you want to visit because it is an amazing place. When we were finished with our tour, we left the cave via the elevators. As you can see, the right elevator was 725 feet below ground when I snapped this picture.
It had been very rainy while we were at Carlsbad Caverns, but we really didn’t think much of it since it’s all underground, and we were nice and dry. But what we didn’t really think about is that flash floods are a real possibility anywhere in the desert. While we were enjoying our tour 750 under ground, there was a storm brewing above ground that we weren’t even aware of. We finished our tour and left the park, and less than 30 minutes after we left, a huge flash flood went through Carlsbad Cavern National Park. Everyone had to be evacuated to the visitors center, where they remained for the next 12 hours. We didn’t even know about the event until we got home and heard about it on the news. Wow did we get lucky, getting out just before it all hit.
On our way home, we drove by Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The weather wasn’t conducive to stopping, but we did get to see the tallest peak in Texas.
Till next time, we hope you enjoy your travels.
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