Carlsbad

We left the beautiful hills of northern New Mexico on a cold morning with a chance of sleet predicted throughout the day. We felt comfortable as we knew we were heading south towards better weather. Our destination was Carlsbad to see the famous cavern.

On the drive south we drove through Roswell and had to stop at the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

If you remember (or have read about it for our younger readers), an alien craft (UFO) allegedly crashed on a farm outside of Roswell in 1947 and then the US Government covered up the site and the story. The museum had a lot of affidavits from locals around the area and from government personnel stating that the occurrence actually happened. Was it real? I don’t know, but interesting reads. Nanu Nanu.

We continued our drive down to Carlsbad and stayed outside of town at the Carlsbad KOA.

A nice place in the dessert! Check out the remnants of snow.

The following day we headed to the Carlsbad Cavern.

We decided to hike down into the cavern and took the elevator out. My calf was feeling up to the task. Check out this entrance:

Since we were there later in the year, most of the bats had already migrated back to Mexico. Apparently, in season, there is a “bat show” at night li when the thousands of bats leave the cave in search of food. We did get to see some of them:

We had a very nice hike down into the cavern – paved! Once we arrived, we were treated with these beautiful formations:

Stunning! Seeing all the stalactites, the stalagmites, the pools, and the ribbons is awe inspiring. Mother Nature is truly phenomenal! Do you remember your fourth grade earth science class? Do stalactites holds tight to the ceiling or are those stalagmites because they might fall? I had to look it up too!

On the way back we stopped in Carlsbad at the Yellow Brick restaurant for dinner.

Nice place with fairly decent food. We headed back to the Busse Bus as we were leaving the next day and cold weather was being predicted.