Carlsbad Caverns

      Vast.

     That may be the best word for Carlsbad.  To get there from here, you cover a vast amount of territory.  You will be about 170 miles from El Paso, Texas.

      Passing through the town of Carlsbad to get to the caverns, after crossing about 20 miles more of the endless flatlands, you pass through some pretty good-sized hills, though nothing near the Rocky Mountains we know.

     The entrance to the cavern sits on top of a hill.  The view to the south is vast.  (Not unlike the view to the south from the Genoa Tower, to use a universal reference that everyone will understand!)

      From the visitor center, you make a choice of walking down the pathway to the caverns, or you can opt for an elevator ride of some 750 feet.  Forty years ago, I took the walk.  I find I didn’t remember much of the caverns from that first visit, excepting their vastness, of course.  I do remember that my knees complained from the downhill trip.

      This time, we chose the elevator.  Before entering the elevator, a ranger goes over the rules of the cavern:  get rid of your gum, don’t leave any trash, don’t touch anything, bring a flashlight (for sale at the gift shop), whisper if you must talk because sound carries all over the caverns, etc.

     For $5, you can rent a telephone that comments on things all the way through the caverns.  When you come upon a sign with a number on it, you push that number into your rented phone and listen to the commentary.  It’s probably worth the money. If you walk down, there are 50 talking points.  If you ride the elevator down, you do numbers 20 through 50.

       Getting off the elevator, you can visit the restrooms for the last time, buy a snack or drink, which you cannot take with you as you enter the touring area, or sit a spell before taking the tour—especially helpful to those who have make the trip afoot.  You can buy a flashlight, too.

     Another thing I did not remember from my first visit was a way to walk back to the surface--estimated time, 45 minutes to an hour.  About ten minutes into the cavern, you can choose to short circuit the main route and head back to the elevators if you have had enough.  We took the long way.  After all, we had to get our money’s worth.  (Actually, our admission was free via our national parks pass.) 

      The voice on the telephone tried to give the listener an idea of how big the caverns are by comparing the number of football fields that could be fitted into the space.  It is huge.  The roof or ceiling in places is several feet high.    

     It would be difficult to fit one football field in there, practically speaking, because there isn’t much flat space.  Stalactites and stalagmites appear everywhere along with crevices and fissures and small pools of water.  Words can’t do the place justice.  Neither can my pictures.  I couldn’t see well enough to turn on the camera’s flash.

   Without the telephone guide, we would have missed a lot, including the history of the discovery and development of the place.  One thing we would certainly have missed was a rope dangling from a dome several feet above us. 

     The story is that some intrepid spelunkers wanted to climb up into the dome, so they floated a helium balloon up with a rope and some sort of anchor.  They managed to get the rope hooked to something up there, not sure how, and one brave guy then proceeded to climb the rope and hook it firmly so other explorers could climb up and take a look.

     Another marvel is the lighting.  The telephone voice said a Hollywood lighting specialist designed the lighting.  When you look at where the lights are stationed, you have to wonder how they ever manage to change a burned out bulb.

      In the olden days, there was a point on the guided tour where the Ranger could shut off the lights and the visitors got to experience total darkness for a few moments.  They don’t do that anymore.  If a power failure occurs, an emergency generator takes over.  If it fails, some lights have their own battery and can take over for a long enough time to get everybody out of the cave.

      The caverns were formed by water.  Water still infiltrates, allowing the formations to continue growing, and pools of water to remain.  It takes eight months for surface water to percolate down into the caves. 

      Now, the biggest changes to the caverns are caused by people.  The visitor center and its paved parking lot cover up a lot of territory where water once could soak in and down, for example.  A surprising thing, lint from people’s clothes, has to be removed occasionally.  I shouldn’t be surprised.  Melvin, our deceased school janitor friend, once said that judging from the lint and hair he swept up at the end of the day, he wondered that the students weren’t all naked and bald.

      A couple of things occurred to me during our visit: what would an earthquake do to the caverns?  The Ranger lady said the caves would be the safest place to be in an earthquake.  The shock waves get transmitted through solids, like earth and rock.  When the waves hit the caves filled with air, they dissipate rapidly, air being more flexible than rock or earth.  I would still prefer to be on the surface if a quake comes.

     The second thing I thought about was a sinkhole somewhere (Florida?) that swallowed up several Corvettes on display some years ago.  If a fissure developed on the surface above the caverns, several cars dropping through the gap wouldn't amount to a morsel in the cavern's maw.  Maybe I should quit thinking.

     Our trip took us the better part of two hours, stopping to listen to thirty-some explanations. Not once did the caverns stimulate my claustrophobia, they are that vast.  We rode the elevators back up and headed for the cafeteria.   

     Having refreshed ourselves, we headed home.  North we went through Roswell (sorry, I couldn’t revisit the UFO museum) and onto Fort Sumner where we overnighted.  We rejoined the rat race (also known as I-25) near Las Vegas, NM and on home.