Many Trips, One Journey: Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad Caverns is one of the coolest places I have ever been in my life. To get to the main section of the caverns, you need to go about 800 feet underground. There is an elevator you can take down, but I was not about to take an elevator 800 feet underground in a cave (re: my irrational fear of elevators). Well, it turns out that my refusal to take elevators unless absolutely necessary was a great thing because instead of a boring elevator trip down into the caverns, we were able to hike in via the natural entrance. The natural entrance route brings you down into the caverns via the Main Corridor. Along the way we got to see Bat Cave, Devil's Spring, Green Lake Overlook and the Boneyard, all of which we would have missed seeing if we had taken the elevator down directly into the Big Room route starting point! It was so amazing to descend into the earth and watch the entrance grow smaller and the light emanating from it grow dimmer until eventually it could no longer be seen. It was a fantastic experience!

Here are some fun facts about the thing we saw as we descended into the cavern via the natural entrance. First we walked through the bat cave which is where the majority of the caverns bat population lives. We then passed into "The Twilight Zone" which is the portion of the cave that is between light and darkness. There is enough natural light before the twilight zone to see without the use of artificial light. Immediately after the twilight zone, it would be pitch black without artificial light. As we headed down into the dark portion of the cave, we entered the Green Lake Room which is one of the scenic rooms in the cave. Apparently, back in the 40's they tested the caverns for use as a fallout shelter and used the Green Lake as an indicator of how safe they were. They tested a nuclear bomb somewhere and waited to see if ripples appeared in the lake -- none ever did. Pretty cool.

When we finally got down into the Big Room, I felt very satisfied with our decision to hike down via the natural entrance and things just got even better from there. The Big Room is INCREDIBLE. It's the largest chamber in the caverns (4000 feet long, 625 feet wide, 255 feet high) and it's the third largest chamber in America and the 7th largest in the world!! It was absolutely amazing that you could be 800 feet underground and feel like you're in a vast open space. Definitely one of the coolest places I've ever been!

We saw so many amazing things inside the caverns including The Bottomless Pit (which is actually about 140 feet deep), the "Rock of Ages", the "Temple of the Sun", Mirror Lake and Devil's Spring which was one of my favorite parts of the caverns. If I'm ever back in New Mexico I would definitely go back to Carlsbad Caverns. Definitely worth seeing.