We drove over 95 miles of dead flat countryside until we turned into the national park where the drive up to the cavern visitor center was through the hills of the Guadalupe Mountains.
Standing in front of the visitor center, I took a panorama of the view. There's the edge of the hill, then flat until probably the Atlantic coast.
I don't think there was much more than a speed bump between here and Roswell.
We went through the admission line at the visitor center and once again cashed in on our $10 lifetime national park pass. We found out that we could either take an elevator down the 750 feet to the "big room" or take a short hike to the natural entrance to the cavern and hike down the 750 feet. You know me...I was all in for the walk...so off we went.
I remember them saying there were something like 60 switchbacks to get to the cavern level.
My toes knew the tip of my shoes by the time we found the bottom. The path was quite steep in some areas.
The following shots will give you a flavor of the cavern. Photography isn't the best due to the minimal lighting and one would need to take a tripod down and spend a lot more time photographing the cavern.
The stalactites are the hanging formations and stalagmites the ones on the surface. They range from delicate little icicle like things to massive hanging cones.
These are small.
These kind of a medium size.
These are quite massive formations.
The stalactites hanging here appeared to be probably 50' or so long. They were a long way up on the ceiling of the room.
This shot maybe gives a little bit of a feeling of the vastness of this room. (It also shows the ever present dust on the lens).
These photos show a real intricate formation along one to the cavern walls. There was stuff like this in a few places.
And with that, we finished our hike that totaled a couple miles underground and rode the elevator the 750 feet to the surface. I would have been more than happy to walk up that distance, of course, but the park service requires all hikers to exit via the elevator.
We shopped a little at the gift shop (added to my new t-shirt wardrobe) and went out and had lunch in the RV before driving back to our campsite in Roswell.
That's a wrap on New Mexico for us.
Tomorrow we're looking to stay in Amarillo, Texas.
I think I have a date with a steak there.
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