Ranger Barry
At some point in grade school, I did a report on the cave system at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. That really stuck with me, as going to Carlsbad is something that's been on the list. It did not disappoint. The cave system is huge, really massive. They're still discovering parts of the cave, which is astonishing since they've been exploring it for 85+ years.
I did the self-guided tour through the Big Room, which was pretty amazing. I can't really believe they let the public in there on their own, wandering about as they please. The first rule of these tours is to touch nothing, as just a single touch can destroy tens of thousands of years of growth. Given how good people are with following directions, I can't believe they actually let people into the caves unchaperoned. And, I'm astounded they let small children into the cave, as toddlers are so good at the 'no touching' thing.
After the Big Room tour, I did the guided Kings Palace tour. Ranger Barry was great, full of stories and lots of information. He kept reminding us to take it all in, to not just take pictures. And yet, though we were 950 feet underground without a signal to be had, a woman kept checking her cell phone for messages. Oh, my fellow man, I will never not be amazed by you.
At one point, they sat us down in the Queen's Room, and then turned out the lights. Talk about eerie. Couldn't see anything, and I mean anything. I had my hands right in front of my face and couldn't sense they were there. With the lights out, Ranger Barry started talking about the bugs that live in the cave. When the guy next to me bumped me, I nearly screamed. It was great though; it's probably the first (and last?) time I'll ever be in absolute darkness.
Unlike Kartchner Caverns, you can take photos in the caves. Unfortunately I still haven't figured out the night settings on the camera, so a lot of the photos turned out like this:
But, I did get a few good ones:
This is the entrance to the Big Room, you can see how some formations are right there on the path, just begging to be touched. Even I found myself wanting to touch the pretty, shiny objects. I kept hearing "my preeeciousss" in the back of my head. I did giggle when I heard someone actually say "my precious" aloud.
This formation is called the Lion Tails as it, well, looks like the tails of two lions:
This one is the Shy Elephant. Can you see the back of the baby elephant on the right?
Sadly, I could not stick around to watch the bats emerge from the cave at sunset. It's supposed to be an amazing sight. Hundreds of thousands of bats take hours to get out of the cave, and then they go eat their body weight in bugs. I was disappointed to miss it, but I had a 7 hour drive to Tucson ahead of me. I'll just have to go back, and take some of the more intense cave tours, which involve helmets and knee pads.
1 comment:
You forgot to tell us ho to tell the difference between a stalagtite and a stalagmite!!! :)
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