Turns out plans are like promises -- They're made to be broken. We made it to the caves as per the plan, and found out there was a 1.5 hour guided tour departing in 20 minutes to a section of the cavern not accessible on your own, so we signed up for that and headed down the elevators. Carlsbad Caverns definitely deserves it's reputation, and we saw some really incredible formations, although not over a very large area since the tour moved slowly. We took the elevator back up to the surface for some snacks from the car, and then moved on to the "natural" entrance to the cave. (Elevators are for wimps....)
From the amphitheater where the bats emerge, you proceed down a series of switchbacks. Then down some more. And some more. And then ...... You go down some more. By the time you reach the place where the elevator drops off the wimps, you've traveled 1.25 miles and descended 750 feet, and seen some of the most amazing areas in the cave. Or perhaps we just thought that because almost everybody else there was a wimp, meaning we had the place pretty much entirely to ourselves the entire time.
After we reached the bottom of the elevator, we still had the main self guided tour to do around the "Big Room". This was aptly named, being 8.2 acres in size and taking a couple of hours to tour around. By the time we finished this, we were tired and hungry, but there are no restaurants near Carlsbad Caverns so it was back to Carlsbad itself 30 miles north to grab some dinner. Since none of the locals we spoke to yesterday we able to point us to any good local restaurants, we tried again with a number of employees in the cavern. The consensus seemed to be that we were in the wrong area for decent food, and that our best bet was probably Chili's. Oh well, we'll find some local food later in the trip!
We returned for the bat flight, expecting it to make the Congress Ave bridge bat flight look absolutely puny in comparison. This, alas, was not to be. While the ranger talk ahead of time was interesting and the scenery much better, the actual emergence was very similar to Austin, or if anything somewhat smaller and less impressive. Ah, well.
Tomorrow, it's on to Roswell and White Sands! (At least, thats the plan......)
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