Carlsbad Caverns

Next morning, I got up EARLY and was at the door when Carlsbad Caverns opened. I wanted to avoid long lines and lot of people. To me, the cave experience is so much nicer when it's quiet.


You have choices.
You can walk down and walk back up.
You can walk down and elevator back up.
You can elevator down and walk up.

My choice was to walk down and take the elevator up.
I would do it that way again.
The path is good, clean, and has handrails where needed.

The entrance is large and filled with swallows...

The cave took a couple of hours for me to see.

The climb down was easy,

steep enough I wouldn't want to walk back UP,

but not too steep to make it uncomfortable

going down.

There were fantastic stalactites and stalacmites!

It was unbelieveable to me that people used to take this tour

in the early 1900's with backpacks and lanterns.

Holy Moly!

That must have been scary.

Here is a ladder left over from one of those trips.

This is definitely worth seeing!

But get there early!

By the time I got OUT,

there were long lines and lots of tourists.