November 1, 2007 was our 10 year wedding anniversary. Toby did a great job of planning our anniversary trip this year. We went to Carlsbad Caverns in Carlsbad, New Mexico. (For those of you who keep up with the blog, Carlsbad may sound familiar. We went to Carlsbad earlier this year. Carlsbad, California, that is.) The travelling itself was as easy as it could be. We flew Southwest to El Paso, TX and overnighted there. In the morning, we toured the local Walmart and made a leisurely 2 hour drive to White’s City (the little town that is at the Carlsbad Caverns National Park). Texas / New Mexico has a lot of empty space. We went to a little grill planning to eat lunch and then meander up to the cave (still about 10 minutes away) for the afternoon. After ordering our food the counterman made some conversation and asked if we had been to the caves in the morning. We told him that we had just arrived and were on our way. He looked at us funny and said “The natural entrance to the cave closes at 2p”. It was 1:35p. Toby tried to call the park, but no cell phone reception. She was able to use the diner’s phone to call. The diner people were very gracious and brought our food out to the car where we were putting on shoes and socks in a mad rush. We zoomed up to the cave and bought our tickets at 1:59p. Whew!
Can you spot Toby?
The opening of the cave is called the Natural Entrance because there is also an elevator that goes down 750 feet to the cave. We did the walking tour of the Natural Entrance (the opening where the original cave was discovered) and drove away very excited to be spending more time at the cave. On the way out, I detoured on a scenic driving loop. Toby doesn’t find the desert to be scenic. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Over the next two days, we took a number of tours, both self guided and ranger-guided, both on trail and off trail. Toby really did a good job of planning our tours so that the tours progressed in intensity and adventure. We did all our on trail tours on Thursday: a self guided tour through the Big Room and a ranger guided tour in the afternoon. Then Friday we did 2 off-trail tours. There are miles of trail in the caves that have been paved and have metal handrails and scenic spots and such. The off-trail tours take you to the lesser known areas, past the warning signs and into the undeveloped sections of the cave. The morning tour was to ‘The Left Hand Tunnel’ and was done with candle lanterns to give a sense of what the first explorer’s might have seen. The view of the caves is quite a different by candlelight as opposed to modern LED D-cell flashlight. On this tour we also had a time of utter blackout when the ranger asked everyone to blow out the lanterns. We sat in the dark for about 10 minutes waiting for our eyes to adjust to the complete 100% dark, but they never did, and never would. It was a very claustrophobic feeling.
The afternoon tour was to the ‘Lower Cave’. For this off-trail tour we had to have helmets and gloves. We started by going down a steep incline for about 50 feet using a rope for balance. Then it was down another ~100 feet via small ladders at various angles. Most of this tour had to be done in single file and one part of it had to be crawled. There were a number of spots where we were instructed on how to help the person behind to navigate the obstacle. It was all very exciting and exhilarating for us ‘cave rookies’.
Most of the pictures we took of the cave formations did not turn out very well because of the low light conditions, but we did get a couple of good shots.
Our travel home was again very easy. Both directions the plane was only 1/2 full. On the way back Toby even slept most of the flight lying down in her own row. Thanks to Poppa and Yaya for watching the kids and the dogs, and thanks to everyone else who also took shifts with the kids. It was most appreciated. Next week : off to Kentucky!
