On our way out to our summer vacation this year, we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns. I had never been there, but I thought the kids might enjoy seeing the cave, and it wasn't too far out of our way. We got there in plenty of time to walk in the natural entrance to the cave. The beginning starts here- and you can see the entrance to the cave. At night the bats fly out from here, but we didn't stay to see the bats. The walk was 1 1/4 miles of downhill switchbacks. It was lit from hidden lights throughout the cave.
Another view, looking down in.
Most of the natural entrance didn't have the really cool cave features like stalactites and stalagmites, but it was still really cool to walk down.
Once you get to the main cavern, (called the big room) there is a mile long hike around it to see all the cool structures. It is really neat, and unfortunately, my camera didn't take great pictures of it. We did that quickly so we could start a guided tour we went on. By the time the guided tour was about to start, the kids had hiked 2 1/2 miles and were exhausted (and cold since we didn't bring coats in).
Our guided tour showed us the neatest rooms- the King's Palace room. It was breathtaking, it was so pretty.
We went in another room with tons of stalactites and stalagmites and straws.
Then we went to the queens chamber. There were neat formations called draperies:
If you look in the middle of this next picture, you can see an individual straw that is about 1 1/2 feet long. They are called straws because like a straw they are hollow in the middle.
In the queen's chamber they turned all the lights off so we were in complete darkness. Then they lit it with a lantern and that was a different way to see it too.
This is a place we will definitely visit again.
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