6-1-09 Monday (To The Bat Cave!)

We had a nice drive from Alamogordo to Carlsbad. The terrain changed many times. We went up to about 8750 feet, saw dense trees, a river, farmlands and dying towns. During these past 9 months of traveling, we’ve driven through some huge towns/cities as well as little towns. It’s so sad to see small towns who thrived on tourism (I’m guessing) start to empty. Vacant store fronts dot the major thoroughfares. I think to myself, self, because I often call myself that, what happened here? Did a new road take business away? The economy? Did this happen before the economy went south? We’ll probably never know what really happened but I’m saddened by the over abundance of empty gas stations, restaurants and gift shops. The makings of ghost town, for real. The photos below are from a quaint town called “Hope”, oddly enough. We stopped here to eat lunch.

Above: The irony. See the burnt out building? Look at the sign to the left. “No parking fire lane”. Below is the zoomed version.

Above: More irony. The volunteer fire department building is part of or at least attached to the burnt out building. Maybe if they were paid, this wouldn’t have happened?

We checked into this somewhat dumpy RV park, White’s City Resort. We couldn’t be any closer to the caverns though; the RV park is right outside the Carlsbad Caverns National Park entrance! We quickly setup our site and then went 6 miles up to the visitors center. We found we’d have time for a self guided tour through the Big Room route. I took a lot of photos, but to see some well lit professional pictures, the National Park’s website includes bunches of them here. The caverns are GIGANTIC-ENORMOUS. You can fit the Kartchner Caves inside. They didn’t mist us down, prevent cameras, or follow us around like children. It was awesome!

Above: Ranger Jim, lead the way!

Above: Isn’t Fairyland anywhere Jim and I go?

Above: Wow, looks like a giant nipple. If we were childish, we’d draw attention to it.

Above: Good thing we’re adults.

Above: Jim hides.

The thing about these caves is that they look surreal. Almost fake. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re awesome and I look forward to seeing more of it tomorrow.

They offered a Bat Flight Program. We returned to the RV, made dinner, ate and returned to the visitor’s center to an outdoor amphitheater. Basically, we listened to a ranger speak while we waited for bats to fly out of a cave. Somewhere around 400,000 Brazilian (aka Mexican) free-tail bats come out of the cave every night in search of their dinner. It was awesome, we were able to be a part of that. We could see the cave mouth, then watch the bats spiral upward and then take to the skies. Some bats flew over us, maybe 10 feet away from our heads. No photos or electronic were permitted so as not to disturb the bats patterns. Here’s a photo from the website:

Above: Aside from the sunset, this is what we saw.

Above: Here’s the cave mouth. We had to turn electronics off before the bats arrived.

Above: Jim awaits along with a lotta other people.

Above/Below: The bats arrive at sunset, but prior to that, Cave Swallows fly in and out of the cave.

I think we’ll be able to finish what we want to see by tomorrow afternoon. This will put us back on schedule. Not that we’re on a schedule. Well which is it? Our internet connection is painfully slow, and the RV park doesn’t provide Wi-Fi. What a surprise there. I’m glad our stay will be short.