Back in May, I took a road trip with my mom so she could visit family members. Since she is unable to sit for long periods of time, we broke up some of the longer legs of the drive with visits to museums. I previously covered the TTU Museum in my blog with its quilt, watercolor, and borderland art exhibits. We also swung by the Roswell International Museum, which is mostly a reading experience. Taking pictures of large chunks of texts only works if you are going to turn some of them into stories (yes, I took some photos there too).
To break up the ten-hour trip back (before stops to eat are counted), we took a small side trip to Carlsbad Caverns since it was at the half-way point. (Well, more like 40-60, but better than a full drive in one day, which mom cannot do anymore.) She stayed above ground, visited the exhibit in the air-conditioned visitor center for the park, and watched a movie about the caves. I went below ground.
And I decided to do it the hard way. Yes, they have an elevator for the 750 foot descent and return. But I felt the need to “earn” the right to see the beautiful caves, despite having an arthritic hip. I came prepared with a cane, camera, and jacket (the caves hover at about 52 degrees F). During the ranger indoctrination of the “NO TOUCHIE!!!” speech (things that takes tens of thousands of years to form cannot handle tens of thousands of people touching them every year), the speaker directed the “please don’t go down the 20 degree, over a mile long path, with switchbacks and uneven footing if you have ANY walking issues” to me, sitting on the bench in the instruction area, and the man beside me with a prothesis for a leg. I don’t know if he did the walk or decided the elevator route; the 20 degree incline could be an issue. I hope he did what he needed to do to best enjoy the caves.
The first three pictures describe the descent, shows the opening of the cave system, and the holes just inside the cave opening where the cave sparrows live. The opening walk is covered in bird droppings (as opposed to bat droppings out of at the bat cave entrance).
Seven hundred and fifty feet down is a killer on the calves. My legs were shaking after 0.4 miles – only 0.85 miles to go!!! (And then another 1.25 miles for the Big Cave on “level” “ground”.) Most of the descent is ramps; there is one area of steps. The slippery areas where the water is still dripping and forming stalagmites on the floor, also made gripping the handrails harder. And because of the constant switchbacks, the handrails alternated sides, making using the cane challenging as I constantly changed the hand gripping the cane and the hand on the rail.
It’s impossible to appreciate just how VAST the caverns are and how big the formations. The first formation in the above picture is larger than my house. Thirty or forty feet high and nearly as wide. Created one drip at a time. The second picture is of soda straws and other stalactites structures. Depending on how much minerals there are and how fast the drip dries, the cave formations vary between smooth to popcorn-texture like that captured in the third above photo. 
There is one scenic-overlook that lets one view nearly half a mile of the Big Room in one shot.
The mountain is hollow, your brain thinks. How can something so infinite be empty and full at the same time. Again there is no way to capture the feeling or the features of the cave. The dim light challenged my camera. These few pictures are the best ones I took and the one on the right here is from my camera-phone, which I took so I could do a quick post on Facebook when I came out of the cave.
Well, that is it for the cave pictures, but I also got a good group of pictures of desert flowers and planets. Spring time in New Mexico is beautiful both under and above ground. I found the Ocotillo especially colorful.
The desert was so green and alive with dozens of different plants.
Finally, the architecture of the park administrative buildings fit in well with the landscape and made me want to grab paints. I am not a landscape painter, but for Carlsbad National Park, I might become so.
Museum Visits
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