We arrived at the Carlsbad Caverns early (for us) at 10 in the morning. We started with a self-guided tour which began at the natural opening of the cave. This cave was discovered by a 16 year old cowboy, Jim White, in 1898. He saw black smoke rising from the desert and he rode over to check it out. As he got closer, he noticed that parts of the smoke were breaking off and moving in different directions. Closer still, he saw that the "smoke" was really millions of bats flying out of the mouth of this cave. He spent his life exploring this cave. Our exploration of one of the cave chambers (the Big Room) took 2 hours and 15 minutes. Once underground, the temperature is a constant 56 degrees. Looking around the cave, the stalactites, stalagmites, columns and underground pools were magical.
In the afternoon we took a ranger-guided tour of an area called the King's Palace. This was one and a half hours long and truly spectacular. To get there we took an elevator which descends 754 feet (75 stories) down ino the earth at nine miles per hour. When we were in the Queen's Chamber the lights were turned out so we could experience total darkness. It was like a velvet darkness-very calming.
There are other cave tours that we opted out of. They were all-day adventures which required knee pads, headlamps, three forms of light (flashlights), replacement batteries, climbing down rope ladders. Cavers get muddy and scraped up. We said no to this.
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