This is our last official National Park to be visited, on this journey. Sigh. It’s been such a hot 🥵, yet awesome adventure.
Carlsbad Caverns makes number 12 for number of national parks, on this trip.
Hot Springs
Petrified Forest
Zion
Bryce Canyon
Capital Reef
Canyonlands
Arches
Joshua Tree
Saguaro
White Sands
Guadalupe Mountains
Carlsdbad Caverns
Of all the parks we’ve visited on this trip, six of the national parks, as well as all of the state parks were new checkmarks on our bucket list. I think we’ve visited 21 national parks now, so it’ll get more difficult from here because the parks left to visit are as far away, as possible, from Florida. Interestingly enough, we haven’t even hit any of the three national parks in Florida yet. We figure at some point we’ll be too old to drive cross country and we can save those three parks for when we’re less mobile.
We’re so blessed to be able to do this together and to be able to involve our kids on this year’s adventure. Such a neat experience! We’re even more blessed to have adult children that actually like hanging out with us. lol
The Caverns of Carlsbad is a seriously big cave system. We weren’t prepared for how big this cave is and even the best photos don’t do it justice.
We also found out that caves are quite hard to photograph. The NPS folks did a tremendous job with lighting to show off cool cave features, but the rest of the light just gets swallowed up in the dark.
It’s a 700 foot drop from the surface to the level of the Big Room, as they appropriately call the big room. It is a 1.25 mile hike down three sets of steep switchbacks just to get to the bottom, and then it is another loopy and lumpy 1.5 miles of guide rail lined path down below. Thankfully, the exit is via elevator, so you ascend 75 floors in just a few minutes!
We were prepared with warmer clothes and water. It’s 56 degrees in the cave year round. (Would have been nice to have one of these at Havasu. Maybe they should look around a bit? Maybe they have one. They’re usually buried.)
We were completely surprised by the fully functioning bathroom facilities at the bottom of the cave. Just knowing the option is available greatly relieves the old GI tract. What I can’t get over is who had the insane idea to install plumbed toilets 700+ ft below the surface? Something truly awful and smelly must have happened along the darkened cave trail in order for the National Park Service to spend that kind of money on fully functioning bathrooms. This is our very first visit to this national park, so whatever happened, it can’t be blamed on us.
We took a ton of pictures with the low light capability of the iPhone and we still deleted 95% of them. I mean, its pretty cool to check out all of the stalagmites and the stalactites (its easy to tell the difference if you look at the way that they are), but without seeing them in person, all of the pics just look like weird pictures of shiny rock things in poor light. So, we will spare you those.
We still had fun wandering around down there. As we walked through, it was really hard to imagine the first hand experience of all of the crazy folks that first discovered this place (at least, in the modern era) and the even crazier folks that built the internal infrastructure so it could be navigated by novice spelunkers, like us. They did a great job building a continually sloping floor with almost no steps and all of the steel handrails on both sides that looped and turned and indented and went up and down slopes in one long continuous rail. They also later installed power and elevators and very well-placed lighting to show off neat features.
We kept picturing what it would have been like to walk in the absolute pitch black dark, when they first discovered the caves.
Thankfully, the lights never went out, but it would have been kinda cool.
We took the elevator back up to the top and boogied on out of there.
It was still nearly three hours in total. Time well spent.
We got back to the camper and decided to take care of the little routine housekeeping stuff for the afternoon. Laundry, tidying up, gift shop stuff.
The White’s City Gift Shop and White’s City Laundromat were great! The Laundromat was cheap and effective. Cheapest laundry we have seen in a while. For those curious, it was $1.50 for the wash and $1.00 to dry. Places like Zion are $4 each.
While waiting for the clothes to finish drying, (it’s considered very good social behavior in the camping scene to get your stuff out of the washer or dryer quickly, after it’s finished the cycle), we decided to visit the White’s City Gift Shop and the attached White’s City Old Timey Museum Thing, and the White’s City Grocery Store for a bit.
It was all one building, so the commute between was manageable.
There was nothing in the gift shop that we decided we couldn’t live without, but we did spend some time in the museum place…
We were both successful at finding our long lost relatives.
We went back to the laundry room and collected our bloomers. We can’t remember who owns this particular pair of bloomers…
And finally, before we retire to the library for the evening (i.e. turning slightly sideways in the airstream to assume a more comfortable reading position), we took care of a little grooming that cannot be done solo without the right tools, which we did not have.
Eyebrow scissors come in handy in a pinch to get annoying nose hairs and mustache hairs out of the way.
Time to go wash off the scissors and call it a day!
Headed to visit more long lost relatives in Roswell, NM tomorrow!
TaterTotTales 