Well, this week was the time, after 60 +/- years, he finally arrived. We moved from Texas back into New Mexico and on Saturday we went to the caverns. It's just about impossible to put into words what we saw. We love caves, and thought we had seen some magnificent ones. But all of them are put to shame by Carlsbad Caverns. After spending about 1 hour getting down to the bottom we took the elevator up 750', had lunch and took the elevator back down to take a guided tour of another area of the cavern. On Monday we went back earlier in the day and it took us 2 hours to walk to the bottom this time, Dick having brought the tripod so he could get better pictures. We took the elevator back up to have a picnic lunch that Jackie prepared and then back down on the elevator where we took the self guided tour of the "Big Room". It took us 2 1/2 hours to do the 1-hour tour.
To give you an idea of the size of this room, it's 14 football fields long, some 250' high and covers an expanse of six acres. The trail runs about 1 mile inside the room and is the star of Carlsbad Cavern.
The sign as you enter the park and it's still another 14 mile drive up to the top where the entrance is.
After paying our fee (oh it's free for us), we walked over to look down into the Natural Entrance of the cavern. We thought that's pretty steep and has a few switch-backs. We had to travel a little over a mile to drop 750' in elevation, so there were a lot of switch-backs.
The shiny things that you see in this picture that looks down are the stainless steel handrails at each switch-back. Gives you an idea of how steep it really was. And to top it off, it had very subdued lighting but we had our flashlights and Dick's trusty camera.
The first trip down Dick used the flash where he could, but because of the size of the room the flash would not travel far enough to get any good pictures. So he settled for areas where the shot was closer.
Every turn was something new and spectacular. It was all shades of brown with lots of translucence in it.
In the Big Room the second day all the pictures are time exposed from 3 to 30 seconds and the bright spots are where there is indirect lighting to highlight an area.
The pictures don't do justice to what we saw unless you click on them and blow them up to get a better feeling of what is down there.
It was hard to guess at exactly what exposure time was needed on each picture so some are a little under and some a little over exposed, but you will get the idea. This one was taken looking straight up at the ceiling about 175' over us.
The handrail gives you some idea of size.
The room went on and on and on, more and more incredible stalactites, stalagmites, curtains, etc.
I estimate this stalagmite to be over 50'tall. There is not any green in the cavern; Dick's camera needed a filter to filter out the green caused by the type of lighting used. It does add some interest to the photos.
What can we say, please just enjoy the remaining pictures.
Do you see the 3 other people in the picture? While taking this 25 second exposure, Jackie stood real still and 3 people walked through, but because they never stopped they did not show up on the picture.
If you enjoyed these, we sure would like to hear from you. Next stop is to see the "little green men".To be continued...
