We boondocked a couple of nights at the Sunset Reef Campground, which was convenient to both Carlsbad Caverns National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Unfortunately, it started storming shortly after we got to Guadalupe, so we didn’t end up going on a hike as planned. We only had time to visit the Visitors Center, take a few photos and walk around an old ranch home before the storm hit. We even had to pull over a couple of times on the way back to the RV to let the hail pass. Thankfully, it was small enough to not dent the truck.
The next day, we toured Carlsbad Caverns. It’s a short, downhill hike from the parking lot / Visitors Center to get to the Natural Entrance. When we got down there, we heard someone talking about the audio tour that was available for purchase at the Visitors Center. After talking to someone who had listened to the first few points of interest on it, we decided it’d be worth hiking back up and getting it. If you’ve read many of my posts, you already know I’m all about listening to someone tell me stories, instead of having to read too much! Once we got the audio devices, we headed back down to the entrance. After only a few stops, I was glad we had the audio. It told some extra stories and information that weren’t on the placards to read.
The natural entrance of the cave has a 1.25 mile steep trail that is equivalent to walking down a 75-story building. At least they had an elevator to get back up! The caverns really were pretty impressive. It had very large open areas and lots and lots of formations. Besides all the stuff we saw while walking along the Natural Entrance Trail, we walked around the Big Room area, too. It was cool to see a few old ropes and ladders still there from the early explorers. We took our time going through and spent several hours in the caverns before taking the elevator back up to the Visitor’s Center.
We had a few hours before needing to be back for the Bat Flight, so we at our picnic lunch, drove around Carlsbad, ate some ice cream at KaleidoScoops, fueled up, then went back to the park. A park ranger educated us about bats while we waited, expecting the bats to start flying out around sunset. They took longer than expected to fly out, and there weren’t as many as I had imagined there’d be. Evidently, some had already started migrating south for the winter. Plus, it was just harder to see them since it was later and darker than normal. Randy and I hung around for a while longer to see if anything else would happen, then headed back to the RV. I guess a good Bat Flight is still on our list of things to see, since this one left a bit to be desired. Oh well, we still enjoyed our day at Carlsbad Caverns!
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