Hey hey USA - 14th October - the intrepid tourists go underground

 We reached the visitor centre at Carlsbad Caverns around 11.00 o'clock and we were excited to get down the elevator (or lift!) and view the caves. In deference to our infective state we wore masks, although, fortunately, there were not that many visitors when we were there. 

We have 'done' lots of caves and some of them can be very tacky. But Carlsbad Caverns was what you might expect from the US National Park Service, and in the best of all possible taste. They were lit with warm, quite dim lamps. Those formations that were named had been given their names by a teenage boy, Jim White, who first explored the caves in 1898. There are drawings in the caverns from early native people but no one else seem to have used the caves until they were mined for bat guano in the 1800's. That was from a cave exit which is still home to thousands of bats. Not the way we went in!.

The Guadaloupe Mountains lie across the Texas/ New Mexico border and were formed from deposits of sponges and algae when the area was covered with an underground sea, around 265 million years ago. The reef that was formed was thrust upwards to form the mountains. As this was happening cracks appeared in the rocks and filled with seawater. When these portions of reef rose above the water they drained and the large caverns started to form. There are believed to be over 100 cave systems in the area but only 3 of them are accessible.

We took the lift 230 metres down into the first cavern and were stunned by the size of the caverns and the variety of limestone formations we saw. And it is very pretty so there are lots of photographs. The self guided tour goes for more than a mile through different rock chambers on several different levels.   

The first formations we saw were the Giant Dome and the Twin Domes

 

This is a map of the caverns. We did the bottom loop going round the Lower Cave and Big Room from the Visitor Centre. The Big Room is the largest cave chamber in North America by volume, you could fit over 6 American football fields inside it.

The formation below is known as the Totem Pole.

In the picture below you can see how tiny the people are in relation to the formations

A rope ladder left by explorers in 1924

The Hall of Giants, some are over 20 metres tall.

Crystal Spring Dome

A good examplele of a flow formation

There are some tiny people at there rear right hand side of the above picture.

The Doll's Theatre

The bridge over Longfellow's Bath Tub

After we had ascended the lift into the light we had a look at the displays of history and biology in the visitors centre and went for some well earned lunch.