We had a lot of fun visiting the grandkids in Casa Grande, AZ, and then we moved on to Carlsbad, NM.  Rather than drive the whole way in one long day we split the drive and stopped for one night mid-way.  As we were nearing the Guadalupe Mountain range (a very short and mostly small range but still the highest point in New Mexico) Jeff was very interested in the formation at the highest end-peak and so he took a couple of pictures of it.  Also, at the bottom of the highest end-peak was a huge salt flat that apparently used to be a lake, you’ll see a picture of that as well.  It was interesting to see that most of the landscape around here is very flat, and in the middle of it is this mountain range sticking up!

We visited the Carlsbad Caverns yesterday with a self-guided tour of “The Big Room”.  Later today we’ll go back and do a ranger-guided tour of “The King’s Palace”.

It’s an amazing place!  If you haven’t been there, you need to add this to your bucket list for sure!  Hikers can go through the natural entrance and down through the bat cave to get to the caverns which are 750 ft below ground.  We chose to take the elevator and were there in less than 1 minute!  The national park service did a great job of placing walkways with good railings throughout the areas that visitors can go in, without interfering too much with the natural setting.  A lot of the time we couldn’t see the railings more than a few feet behind and in front of us.  And, because this was a self-guided tour, we went at our own pace, stopping to take pictures and look at formations.  On a Wednesday in October it wasn’t that crowded and several times we couldn’t hear any sound other than water dripping and our own footsteps.  WOW!

Below are pictures we took in “The Big Room”.  Things to note about the pictures are:

• the natural state of the caverns is pitch black, any lighting you see is artfully placed by the national park system or caused by the flash of the camera
• one picture is of a large stalagmite with a shape that has been name “the caveman”.  Can you find it in the pictures below?
• In addition to a myriad of stalagmites and stalactites there were other formations.  One we dubbed “lace” because it was flat, very low formations with waves and holes in it that resembled lace.
• There’s a lower cavern below the big room that is available for tours only for the hardy!  A couple of the pictures show an old metal and wire ladder used in 1924 when the National Geographic magazine sponsored a exploratory and surveying trip into the caverns.

Enjoy these pictures: