My initial research for the trip revealed that the National Park Service 100 year anniversary celebration included a free admission to Carlsbad Caverns. I sent a general email to folks in which I proposed leaving on Thursday September 22nd for the 9.5 hour drive from Corpus Christi. We would do the hike early on Friday the 23rd. The National Park Service has free admission to Carlsbad Caverns on Saturday the 24th as part of the 100 year anniversary of the NPS. I proposed spending Saturday there and driving back on Sunday. We didn't get any other takers. Apparently football is more important than nature to our younger co-workers. John encountered a conflict with the Chamber of Commerce activities he is deeply involved in, so we changed the adventure to leaving on September 30th, a Friday. We would do the hike on Saturday, and return on Sunday. I hadn't realised that John had never been in the caverns, so we added visiting the caverns on Sunday morning and heading back in the afternoon to arrive late Sunday so that we could be ready for work on Monday morning sharp.
The bats started exiting the cave right at 7PM. At first there was short spurts of bats exiting in a curling pattern before heading off. As it started getting darker the groups got larger, but were harder to see. Finally it was too dark to make them out, so we left. I had researched some restaurants in Carlsbad, and we decided to go to the "Little Italy Cafe" just off the main drive, Canal Street. The goal was to carb up for the hike tomorrow. The bread was real good, the food and service were just ok.
This hike wasn't messing around. We encountered the steepest incline almost right away. Actually there' a Devils Trail option that levels out the very steep section, but adds another mile or so to already 8.4 mile trip. The path was marked with large stones that you had to step around or step up on, etc. which meant you needed to be very careful and deliberate the whole way. It took us over 3 hours to reach the top. We missed one turn and turned a short part of the walk into a climb. We stayed there for a half hour or more, just taking pictures and waiting for some rain clouds to clear. Then we headed back down. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves until we ran into an 8 year old girl already about four fifths of the way up and still skipping her way along the trail. For being outside the summer vacation period and no holiday associated with the day, there were quite a few people making the hike. John sent me some of the photos hed did with his cell phone. I mixed them in with mine here. He did the panorama shots. They came out pretty good. I'm gonna have to work on that. I think my cell can do that too. My plan was to clean up after the hike and attend mass at St. Edward Church. It is a couple of blocks from the Yellow Brix Restaurant. I thought John could start on some wine or something there while I attended mass then could walk to joing him. I could have made it in time for the start of mass if I didn't shower, but I was too tired to stay alert. We cleaned up and went to the Yellow Brix restaurant. It was a little different than I anticipated. It said seafood on their ads, so I was hoping for a trout option. Their selection wasn't that extensive and service a little slow, but it almost looked like a semi-fancy type restaurant.
Sunday morning the first tour is released at 8:30 am, and the park is only about a half hour from the hotel, so we agreed to do breakfast, etc on our own and plan to check out around 8:00. John was a little uncertain that he could do the second day hike with his knees being a tad soar. I redid my eggs, brisket and gravey to start followed by a waffel. John had considered doing the elevator start and skipping the natural entrance start which adds about 2 miles to the tour. He felt well enough to do the whole tour. See the Carlsbad Caverns Brochure Map for the options. We ended up doing the natural entrance. So we got to the visitor center a little after 8:30. When I went to pay for our tickets, the ranger explained the Senior Pass Program. For the $10 I was paying for our two entrances I could buy a senior pass that allows me free entrance for the rest of my life plus three other persons or occupants of a vehicle. It took me awhile to decide, I deliberated for quite awhile before I bought the pass. So we followed the same half mile or so path to Natural Bat Entrance where we had watched the flights on Friday, then descended into the cave. The first part was a bit steep and the stalagmites not as impressive as in the big room. It was well worth the extra mile of walking. My camera was having trouble deciding how to focus in the darkness so I switched to my underwater camera, which had a bit better luck taking the pictures. I also bought a stack of 30 postcards in case the photos was a complete failure. The images follow the path from the map linked up above by starting at the natural entrance. My photos follow the blue trail down to the rest area and lunch rooms. We then followed the red trail around the big dome
I'm not sure exactly when we left the park, but we had to retrace the road past the hotel to head back the way we came so that added a bit to the return trip. We reversed the order such that I drove the the first 3 hours or so then John did the same and I brang us home from San Antonio. John Googled a barb-b-cue place in Ozona where I was to pass the keys back to him. It was supposed to be a five star place. We found it and were the only customers there, but they seemed to be preparing for a crowd later with all the chicken they were getting ready for the grill. The food was ok and we got back on the road again relatively quickly. We got to John's place somewhere around 9 PM, and I got home before 10, so we were able to get to work the next day as planned. Links:
Guadalupe National Park Service
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We arrived at the Sleep Inn & Suites 3:00 PM, checked in, then headed
to Carlsbad Cavern. Unfortunately we arrived about 10 minutes after
the last trip through the caverns started. So we had about 3 hours
to kill before the bat flight. After touring the exhibits in the
visitor center, we found a short hiking trail near the natural
entrance. So we did a warm up walk for tomorrow's hike.
They didn't allow any photographing during the bat flight, so I
added a few postcard images from a set of post cards I bought at the
visitors center.
