Next Up....Carlsbad Caverns

Friday morning we left Fort Stockton heading northwest to Carlsbad Caverns on Hwy 285....not a great highway to start with and you share with a lot of trucks. Nevertheless, we made it safely to the Caverns just after lunchtime. It wasn't cold outside but we knew it would be quite cool in the cave so light jackets are advised. You have many choices of how to do Carlsbad Cavern. We chose to take the elevator all the way down and do a self tour of the Big Room Cavern. You can choose to hike in through the Natural Entrance but it is a long hike and steep....not our cup of tea. You can also do Ranger tours of other parts of the caverns but you need to make reservations ahead of time. It is great to have a National Park Pass and even better if you have the Senior Pass as the Big Room tour is.....free. They do have parking for RVs in the first lot.

This is a very neat sculpture in the lobby representing bats flying out of the caverns. The bats cave is off limits so you don't have to worry about bats during your tour.

There is lighting in different spots in the cavern. You do a circular tour that is about 1.3 miles. There is a short cut if that is too far for you to walk. We did the whole tour.

If you look at each of the pictures, some are better than others, but you can see that the cave is not the same all the way through even in this very large room.

These are called the lions tails. 

This looked like sheets of paint....very different from the other stalactites which were sharply pointed.

It was a lot of fun deciding what the different formations looked like.

This is a ladder used by earlier explorers down into the lower caves.  Never in a million years....

After our tour of the caverns, we headed north to the SKP Ranch. Birdie and I belong to Escapees and Mary Jane was able to come as our guest. We had a wonderful night with electric, water, and sewer hookups for $14/night plus electric. My electric bill was $ .70. The park is very nice. We were able ro rent lots that owners were currently not using. It's a beautiful park and the residents are very friendly. They have great reverse osmosis water now and the wifi is also good. This was my first night at an SKP park and it won't be the last.

Saturday morning we were off to Valley of Fires BLM park near Carrizozo NM.