Warning: Total Photo and Information Overload. You've been warned.
When Andy got his new job in Idaho he had to take over the schedule of the person he was replacing, including any scheduled vacation time. The guy had time off scheduled from Dec. 12-Dec. 21, and since our kids are in school and can't go anywhere right before Christmas Break, Andy decided he would head back down to Carlsbad to do some locums work and pick up some extra moo-lah. A few days before he was set to go he told me that he had got his mom to come watch our kiddos so that I could also go. We left from Idaho Falls airport on a tiny plane to Denver, and then flew on another tiny plane from Denver to Hobbs, NM.
I decided that I wanted to do some of the "extra" Carlsbad Caverns tours while we were down there since this might be my last chance (who knows when we'll be down that way again?!?). Sadly, the one I MOST wanted to do (Spider Cave) is not currently offered (and may never be again) due to safety concerns, and the one I SECOND MOST wanted to do (Hall of the White Giant) was sold out like a month in advance because they only take 8 people at a time and it sounds super awesome. So the first one I signed up for was Slaughter Canyon (my 3rd choice), which is actually an entirely separate cave about 30 minutes away from the main cave. They do this one on Friday mornings, so I got up bright and early the morning after we arrived to head down there. We met at the Visitor's Center and then followed the ranger out to the middle of nowhere down a dirt road.
As we began our hike up the mountain to the cave, we passed this mountain that they call "Elephant Rock". I see the elephant, do you? This whole area actually used to be a sea, so all these mountains and caves are the ancient reef. As we hiked up the mountain they pointed out a bunch of cool geological stuff.
New Mexico may be a desert, but it is its own kind of beautiful. The views of the Permian Basin as we hiked up the mountain were really pretty!
Eventually we got up to the cave entrance and donned our helmets so we could feel official (and have light because this cave doesn't have paved trails or electricity). We headed down a path and a rock staircase into the cave, and it was amazing how bright 12 headlamps could make things. It helped that the sunshine could still get into this part of the cave as well.
The photo below is where the sunlight ends and total darkness begins. It was crazy that there is such a stark contrast. What's even crazier is that WAY beyond this point, deep down inside the total darkness of the cave, they've found pictographs. Native people came down into the cave (would've had to be with handheld torches) to get water from a pool that used to be down there. I feel like I would have been way too scared to venture down there with just a torch that could potentially go out at any time. Yikes.
This cave was originally used as a bat guano mining opportunity, and you could see (example in the photo below) where they had dug trenches to get to the guano. Apparently after a fairly short time they determined that the guano here was really poor quality (there are no bats still living here and probably have not been for a LONG time), so they couldn't even sell it as guano. They had to sell it as "guano enhanced dirt". Needless to say, digging up and selling dirt from way out in the middle of the desert is not super lucrative, so they gave up mining.
The only lights in this cave were from our headlamps, and it's really cool to think that all of these super awesome formations grew in the total pitch black, and when nobody is there (which is most of the time since this cave is only open to tours for 12 people on Fridays). The early explorers with their little lanterns probably didn't even REALLY see how awesome these caves were because they weren't as bright and most likely the light didn't reach all they up to the tops of the cavernous ceilings and stuff.
The cave is really dry right now compared to how it used to be thousands of years ago. There were all these little tiny things that looked like miniatures of the Great Wall of China. Apparently these used to be pools of water.
Just in case you're wondering how dark it is with just ONE headlight. The photo on the right is the formation that was about 5 feet behind me in the photo on the left, but without anyone's lights shining on it, it is not even remotely visible.
This one below looks like some kind of grim reaper to me. Like a skeleton head with a cloak over it.
The one below is not done justice at all by the photo. It's called the Christmas Tree, and is 89 feet tall in real life, and all the white part that you can see is sparkly. It looks just like snow/ice in the sunshine. It's way far back in the cave, and we all sat down near it and turned off our headlamps so that we could see just how dark total darkness actually is. It's a little creepy, I'm not gonna lie. Your brain plays tricks on you and makes you think you can see your hand waving in front of your face, when in reality you can see nothing at all, no matter how long you sit there in the dark. Your eyes cannot adjust to the dark because there is NO light at all.
If you look closely at this one (below), you can see some circle disk-like things growing out from the wall and then stalactites growing down from them. They said geologists don't know how these circle things formed. It doesn't really make sense that they would randomly grow in a circle out from a wall.
I always think it's kind of creepy to walk under these huge bunches of stalactites. What if there was an earthquake and they fell down? Apparently, according to our ranger, a cave is a very safe place to be during an earthquake and the chances of any of these falling are extremely slim. I didn't really understand the explanation as to WHY that is...but it was slightly reassuring!
If you look closely at the photo below you see some purple little things that look like sticks or cherry stems. Those are bat bones. This was in an area where they had tried to mine for guano, and there were thousands upon thousands of bat bones. However, upon examination, it was determined that these bat bones are incredibly old (like thousands or millions of years), and belong to an extinct species of bat that nobody had ever known about before, and this is so far the only place it has been found.
This photo (below) is hard to see, but basically the bottom part is the dirt they were mining with all the bat bones in it, and on top of it was flow stone and stalagmites that had grown on top of the dirt at some point, which helped them determine just how old this dirt (and bones) was.
These are some old tools and stuff left behind by the early miners years ago.
This one is called the Leaning Tower of Pisa because it fell from the wall at some point and is now leaning. It was also white and sparkly like the Christmas Tree.
I can't remember what this is called, and again the picture doesn't do it justice. It was HUGE and looks like a mushroom. Somehow the rock grew down in such a way that it got a mushroom cap on top.
We had some extra time so we took a little loop around another room that they don't always do on this tour. This rock (below) is down in that room, and they have no scientific explanation for how it got to be this way. It appears to have been eroded away by wind, but it looks like this on all sides, and is in a place where there are no wind currents. They do think the cave entrance was MUCH larger years ago, so possibly at that time wind came in and did this? Who knows?!
Overall synopsis of Slaughter Canyon Cave: The hike up to it is not that hard. It's all uphill, but they go pretty slow and rest along the way, so anyone in reasonable health could do it. The cave itself is wide open and not too slippery, so for people who don't like tight spaces, etc., there is nothing to worry about here. Although the trail is not paved, it's packed dirt most of the time, so I felt like it was easy to do. This cave has some really awesome formations in it that you will not see in the main cave, so it's totally worth doing.
The good news was that I met a guy and his son who had 3 tickets for the Hall of the White Giant tour on Monday, but they were pretty sure only the two of them were going to do it, so they took down my phone number and said they'd let me know -- but most likely I could have their 3rd ticket. I was super excited because I REALLY wanted to do that one! I'd also been told by another guy that people sometimes cancel at the last minute, so I should watch the website and try to snatch a ticket that way.
On Saturday morning we hit the golf course with our friends. I really love the Pecos River that runs along the golf course. It's so pretty!
All day Saturday I watched the ticket website and watched my phone to see if anyone cancelled and/or if the guy texted me. Finally at about 4:45pm two tickets popped up for the Monday morning tour. However, because it was less than 48 hours from the time the tour would start, the tickets could only be sold in person -- not online or by phone. It was too late to drive down there that evening because they close at 5, so I decided to drive down first thing Sunday morning to buy my ticket for Monday morning. I got up SUPER early and got down there to make sure I was the first person in line. I had to wait like 30 minutes, but by the time they opened there were like 20 people in line, so I was really glad to be first. However, once they opened the door they said "Hey folks! We have good news and bad news. The good news is that you all get in for free to the cave today, and the bad news is that we can't sell any tour tickets today. We have nobody here to work the cash registers." I asked them if somebody would be in later to sell tickets, and they said "Who knows? Maybe." I said..."So, can I give you my money and you can write my name down? I drove all the way down here to get a ticket for tomorrow before they sell out. I can't sit here all day hoping someone shows up to sell me a ticket." The ranger basically said, "Too bad, so sad. Nothing we can do." Well, anyone who knows me knows that when I really want something I'm not giving up that easily! I found another ranger, explained the situation, and asked if there was ANYTHING they could do. She went and spoke to their outreach manager, and he gave me a business card with a handwritten authorization to go on the tour. They couldn't officially take my money, but I was welcome to put a donation in their donation bucket, so I did that.
On Monday morning I again arrived right when they opened so that I could go on my tour. There was a father and daughter who had arrived super early because they had seen that online it still said there were 2 tickets available for the tour. The guy at the ticket counter sold them the 2 tickets, and then I got up to the front of the line with my business card ticket and he was like "Oh. Well we're only allowed to have 8, and now we have 9. I'm not sure if we can do that. I wasn't aware you had this ticket, and I just sold the last two." As he was contacting his supervisor to check on it (and I was preparing to fight for my spot!), one of the other rangers was like, "Well, wait, though. I think someone left you a ticket anyway. There was a guy who had three and he cancelled 2 and left one for a lady from Idaho. Is that you?" Yep, that's me! I don't know why he didn't call or text me...maybe his phone died? Maybe he couldn't get service? Maybe he had the number wrong? But it was nice of them to leave me a ticket just in case I showed up! :) Anyway, so I was double-covered. Our tour had its 8 people and we were good to go. Right behind me in line were two more people who were also hoping to get those last two tickets. They were like, "We came yesterday and they said they couldn't sell us the tickets, so we came back first thing this morning, but apparently we're too late. How did you get yours?" Well...I came FIRST yesterday, and didn't take NO for an answer! :)
Hall of the White Giant Tour:
First we met in the classroom and obtained helmets, gloves, elbow and knee pads. After we donned all our gear they made us climb through this practice tunnel to make sure we could do it. They also gave us a long talk about how we will head down the natural entrance of the cave and then 'disappear' into the wall, going up a corkscrew-shaped tunnel on our stomachs, after which we will arrive in the Decision Room. At that point you have to decide if you can do this or not. If not, you can turn back. After that point, if ANYONE decides to go back, the entire group has to go back, so basically -- you better be darn sure you can do this.
They were not kidding when they said we would disappear into the wall. We started walking down the natural entrance and then at the end of one of the switchbacks the ranger stopped and said, "Okay, this is where we're going in!" (above). It looked just like the rest of the wall, but sure enough, if you stepped up on the rocks you could get on your stomach and crawl inside. I honestly don't think I could even pick it out if we walked down the natural entrance again. It had nothing to mark it, and it doesn't look like an opening. It was crazy!
We wiggled our way through the corkscrew and made it to the decision room. At that point the dad from the daddy/daughter duo decided he could NOT do this. He had seemed a bit nervous before we started, and I think he just freaked himself out. It's not that he was too big or anything -- maybe he's just kind of claustrophobic? So he decided he had to go back. His daughter was super disappointed because she is only 12 and you can't go without a parent unless you are 16. He asked the rangers if there was ANY way they would let her continue on since she was already in there. They were hesitant, so I volunteered to 'adopt' her for the duration of the tour. I'd been talking to her the whole way up to that point anyway, so we were sort of friends. The rangers agreed that if we stayed in the back so I was in front of her and the tailing ranger was behind her, she could come. Her dad agreed to meet us back at the switchback in a few hours when we popped back out.
I actually felt like the very beginning corkscrew part might have been the hardest part of the whole tour. After that there was quite a bit of climbing, slithering, crawling, and scooting involved, but I didn't feel like it was as hard as the first part. Of course it helped that our group was made up of 5 older folks (a hiking group from Albuquerque), my 12-year-old friend (not mentioning her name because of privacy), and me, so for once in my life I was the fittest one there! That doesn't happen to me often, as I'm fairly wimpy!
At one point we got to use a rope to climb up this chimney, and it was so cool! The rock is flowstone so it's pretty slippery, but you just wedge your back up against one side, hold the rope, and climb right on up. I kept thinking about the earliest explorers and how much time they must have taken to explore every single crack and crevice. Some of the things we went through were crazy small, and then it would open up into a bigger space again. We knew where we were headed (well, the rangers did), but imagine being the ones who first discovered all these passages. SO COOL.
There were a few spots where the lights from our helmets couldn't penetrate all the way into the darkness, and that was a little bit scary. At one point after we crossed over a crack in some rocks the ranger behind us was like "don't want to fall down there. That's like an 80 foot drop." Umm, maybe tell us that BEFORE we cross it?!? It's not like there was any real danger of falling into it unless you purposely squeezed yourself down the crack, but it makes you wonder about some of these other dark crevices!
These are just some pictures of the different colors of rocks. I can't remember what the white is called, but the orange is all iron. There was a bunch of iron in these tunnels.
The photo below was one of the spots where there was a cliff on one side. i think this one was only like 30-40 feet deep, but you can see it just off to the bottom right of this picture. One of the older ladies got really scared at this point and ended up crawling across this part, which I think was actually worse that just walking it because it wasn't super wide, so there wasn't really room to crawl.
As a side note: See that guy in the plaid shirt? We was 70, and he was hilarious. Except he also wasn't at all shy, and I suffered some slight embarrassment from it. At one point I was walking along naturally (I thought) and all of a sudden he said "Terra, WHAT are you doing?" I was like, "What? I'm walking." He said "Are you a Tyrannosaurus Rex? What's with the tiny arms?" And then he started waving his hands around to demonstrate, and everyone laughed at me. See, apparently most people (at least all the people in our group) balance by walking with their arms all the way out to the sides. I apparently balance by walking with my elbows tucked in and just my hands and fingers poking out. I didn't realize it until it was pointed out to me. Ah, well. T-Rex balance works just fine for me! I told them I just have lightning reflexes and my arms are ready to pop all the way out at a moment's notice. When I told Andy this story we was like, "Um, yeah. This is why I don't go places with you. You're embarrassing." He loves me though, so there's that!
When we finally got to the end of all our climbing and narrow tunnels, we were at a room that had this huge bright white stalagmite, as well as walls covered in white drips.
Again, the photos do not do them justice. This part of the cave is still very active, too, so we turned off all our lights and sat there in the total darkness listening to all the drips of water everywhere. It was amazing! Again, imagine being the people who found this! You crawl into a crevice in the wall of the main cave, keep crawling through a bunch of other crevices, and eventually find a room like this. It makes me wonder what else there still is to find.
After making it to the end we had to go back out the way we came in. I actually thought going back DOWN all the obstacles was a bit more tricky than going up, but it was just so much fun!
These photos give a better idea of how small and deep the chimney was. The one below is me almost at the bottom, and then I have to wait to tell my little gal pal where to put her feet because you can't see the foot holds as you're coming down. She was a lot more nervous going down, but she did a great job!
At one point we got to go on this ladder as well (see photo below). It was only 6 or 8 inches wide, and was about 12 feet tall, going up between these two rock walls. We didn't get photos going up, so we wanted some going down. Sadly I only have this one of me, and I blinked!
These things looked like big chunks of salt, and there were quite a few of them. Again, I can't remember what they were actually called. All these crevices are part of the ancient reef though, and it WAS a salt water sea, so possibly they are some kind of petrified salt.
Eventually we popped back out from where we went in, and then walked the rest of the way down the natural entrance into the main cave and took the elevator out. Interestingly, if you've ever been to Carlsbad Caverns you know that they tell you to whisper in the cave because the sounds echos and travels really far. Well, once we disappeared into the wall that rule didn't apply. It was so muffled we could talk as loud as we wanted. In fact, my little friend's dad was waiting outside the crevice for us to come out, and he never once heard us at all until the first person appeared on the outside. We were talking in loud voices about 8 feet away from him in the Decision Room, and he couldn't hear a peep. I'm not sure what the difference is, but it seems crazy that the main cavern echos so much and our little tunnel was super quiet.
Overall synopsis: If you're looking for super cool formations, this is probably not the tour for you. The only really cool thing is the room at the end (and it IS cool). Also, if you panic in tight spaces, or have bad knees or elbows or backs, or don't like heights, or dark...this is not the tour for you.
However, if you're looking for an adventure where you really get to feel like you are a cave explorer and you're not just walking on paths...this is DEFINITELY the tour for you. It was soooooo much fun! I seriously just wish it could have been even longer. There were all sorts of branches off the path we were on, and the rangers kept telling us "oh, yeah, that one goes another 1/4 mile down...", etc. I want to DO that! Someday maybe I'll move back to Carlsbad and become a Park Ranger just so I can explore all the parts not open to the public.
In the afternoons when I got back from my cave tours Andy was usually either done with work or nearly done, so we went on walks and hikes around town. One day we did the whole river walk (I think it's like 4 miles?), starting with walking across the train bridge. We had to take a picture for the kids because they love the train bridge!
Twice we hiked up the Ocotillo Nature Trail. It's not long, but once you get to the top you can see for miles upon miles in every direction, so it's pretty. One of the days we saw these four deer (below) along the side of the trail up towards the top.
On Thursday morning I headed down to the Caverns to do another tour. I made sure to arrive early again because I didn't have a ticket for this tour and I wanted to make sure I got one of the walk-on spots. When I arrived the sunrise was really pretty!
Lower Cave Tour:
When you walk around the Big Room in the Main Cavern, there is spot where you can see part of an old ladder going down a 90 foot hole. The sign tells you that it used to go down to Lower Cave, and there is a sign with a picture of some cave pearls that are down in Lower Cave. The kids always thought the idea of cave pearls sounded cool, so I did this tour so I could go find them in real life.
We started by walking part away around the Big Room backwards, then we veered off the trail, attached a rope to a hook, and climbed down a slope to where there were three metal ladders going down into the 90 foot hole. I've been through the Big Room several times, and I never even noticed this was here! Crazy!
Down in this part of the cave there are still quite a few pools of water, and some of them even have horsetail worms in them. They were super creepy. The worms apparently lay eggs in the water and then a cave cricket drinks the water and swallows the egg, and then the egg incubates inside the cricket. When the egg is ready to hatch, some kind of chemical tells the cricket to go jump in the water. Once it is in the water the worm breaks out of the inside of the cricket. NASTY. Our ranger actually showed us a couple of the worms in the water. Gross. In case you ever needed a warning not to drink cave water, there you go.
...and...
...BOOM. Cave Pearls.
They were even better in real life than I was expecting. There were thousands of them! Apparently they are little dirt particles that fall into these little pockets in the pool of water, and then the current of the water turns them over and over and coats them with layers of minerals. Eventually they get too heavy for the water to roll around anymore, and then they are all done. These ones (below) were about the size of peas thru small marbles. They are like 1000 years old.
The one below was about the size of a large marble (like one of those shooter marbles), and it was broken open and embedded in the surrounding rock. It's cool to see how the minerals in the water must have changed over the centuries this was being formed. You can clearly see a difference in color in the layers. Then at some point this one was too big to move and the mineral content of the water changed, so the minerals were deposited all around it and it got stuck.
The ceiling down there was super cool, too. Again, we just had the lights from our headlamps, so it was just a different kind of feeling from the main cave.
This one (below) is called the Jellyfish. I think it looks just like one!
This is a huge chunk that fell from the ceiling long long ago. They can tell that it didn't fall all at once because of the angle of the stalactites. They think it tipped, then thousands of years later tipped some more, then more, then finally it was too heavy and came down. You could actually see where it used to be attached to the wall/ceiling way up above.
This is another huge white column. They actually drilled some holes in this one years ago to try to determine the age, and guesstimated it at several million years.
It's hard to tell from this picture, but there is a part of Lower Cave where it opens up into the Main Cave (this is the part where the railing is and people can look over and see us), and the ceiling is 185 above us. 185 feet. Now imagine being one of the first explorers with just a little lantern before there was any electricity in the cave. There is NO WAY they knew just exactly how cool their discovery was. They couldn't have seen it! It would be kind of creepy to be down there with all those shadows and areas of darkness where you have no idea what might be lurking!
These were columns that went all the way floor to ceiling and were really smooth.
This one is called the New Mexico chili pepper.
Below is where Jim White (the first recent man to discover the cave) scratched his name in the rock. It says "Jim Nov 1906". Because there is no weather in the cave, it looks like it was scratched yesterday instead of over 100 years ago!
These columns (below) are broken, as you can see by the cracks. They believe they must have been sheared off by a big earthquake because that's the only kind of force that could cause them to crack in the place where they are. The rangers are planning a study to try to use the layers around the cracks to try to determine when the earthquake might have occurred.
On the backside of the broken column are some names and dates written in marker. The dates are 1925, which is again almost 100 years ago, but the marker has not even faded due to no climate change.
The brown lump you can see where the ranger is shining his flashlight through is an ancient bat. At some point it died, fell on this stalagmite, and then got encased inside over the course of thousands of years. Up close you could fully see the shape of his body and wing inside the rock.
Below, about right in the middle of the photo, is another dead bat. It's the brown thing. It died while hanging on this wall, and because of no climate/weather, it takes FOREVER to decompose. They figure this one has been dead for at least 50 years. They said instead of disintegrating it basically turns into jerky and just stays that way for a LONG time.
At one point on this tour they wanted us to experience a little bit of what it might have felt like to be Jim White, who did a ton of exploring all by himself. They had us walk through this skinny tunnel one at a time, and the next person couldn't go until you could not see the light of the person ahead of you anymore. The thing I noticed first was how QUIET it is. I think the quiet might creep me out even more than the dark if I was down there alone. I could hear water dripping now and again, but otherwise it was so silent I felt like I could hear my own heart beating.
To get back out we had two choices - crawl through a tunnel, or walk around on a different path. A few of us chose the crawling route while everyone else walked around.
Then we climbed back up the metal ladders and headed out the way we came.
Overall synopsis of Lower Cave: It's a great medium tour. You see cool stuff AND you get to do a little bit of cave exploring (the ladders, the tunnel), but not so much that you'd feel claustrophobic or anything, and it's definitely doable for people of varying physical abilities. One of the rangers was telling us that there is another tunnel down there called "Long Route" or "Long Tunnel" (I can't remember), and it is a bit more tricky. They only do that one with smaller groups, so I would love to go back sometime when there are only a few people signed up for this tour and see if we can convince them to let us do that other part.
At this point the only two tours I had not done are King's Palace (rated as easy, offered several times per day, and on a paved path) and the Left Hand Tunnel lantern tour. I kinda wanted to do Left Hand Tunnel, but I wasn't going to be heartbroken if I didn't get to. On Friday Andy got off work super early, so I asked him if he wanted to go down and hike at Guadalupe Mountain National Park, go to Sitting Bull Falls, or go on the lantern tour at the Caverns (they happened to be offering it that afternoon -- all the rest of the tours are in the mornings, so it seemed like perfect timing!). He didn't want to do any of the above, but he said we could go down to the Caverns, walk around the Big Room, and then drive around the 9-mile dirt road that I'd also been wanting to do and never got to. We headed down there only to find out that the dirt road was closed for re-grading. As we were in line to get our pass for the Big Room we overheard a ranger saying that only ONE person was going on the lantern tour. They were selling tickets for it for about the next 2 minutes because it was about to start, so Andy decided we could go ahead and join.
For this tour we headed into another part of the cave that I never knew existed, and we got to carry actual lanterns with a real candle with a real flame. I thought they were going to be fake electric lanterns. It was super cool to only have the three of us and the ranger, too, because with only four lanterns it was pretty dark. Plus, since there were so few of us, our ranger took us quite a bit deeper into the cave then they usually do, and also she brought along a blacklight to "show us something extra cool".
Above: There was lots of cave popcorn in this tunnel. You could definitely see how this used to be a reef.
Below: Dead bat on the ground. The ranger said this guy has looked exactly the same for the 11 years she has been working here, so who knows how long he was there before that? It's so strange how things don't decompose!
This pool of water was bright green. What was weird though, is there were other pools within a few feet of it that were NOT. There must just be some different kind of mineral that the water is dripping down through into this area. Our ranger brought her flashlight so that we could take pictures of stuff since lantern light is not very bright!
If you didn't already believe this cave system is one big giant ancient reef...check out the size of these snail fossils in this rock (biggest one is bottom left right above the shadow). Here we are over 700 feet underground and there were shell and snail fossils EVERYWHERE. It makes you really feel like you're in the bottom of a dried up ocean.
Below is a stalagmite volcano. They call them this because it's a stalagmite that was growing for hundreds or thousands of years, and then at some point the chemical balance of the water drip changed and instead of adding to the stalagmite it started dissolving it, so you've got this heaped up stalagmite with a hollowed out center.
These two photos (above and below) are not a good representation of how awesome this is, but...the cave GLOWS IN THE DARK. Because we had such a tiny group our ranger let us blow out our lanterns and then she would shine her black light around on stuff, then shut it off and we'd be left with glowing cave formations for a few seconds. My phone couldn't get a good picture of the glow because when it's dark it tries to soak up all the light it can for a few seconds before taking the photo...but the light was fading during those few seconds. Imagine, though...this photo (below) was taken with ZERO lights on. It should have been total darkness (like the photos from Slaughter Canyon cave), but instead you can see the formation. The ranger said ALL the white things in the cave (Hall of the White Giant room, even) would glow like this if you shined a black light on them and then shut off all lights. It's because of the type of minerals the rock is made of. I had no idea this could even happen.
I was hoping to get a photo of Andy and I with just the lantern light but our ranger had her flashlight on by the time I thought of it. Ah, well. I still like the photo!
This cave bacon (drapes is the official name, I think) looked really cool with the flashlight shining through it!
Synopsis of Left Hand Tunnel Tour: Definitely one of the easiest tours, so if you're not feeling super adventurous but want to try something different, do this one. If you can go when the group is small, it's definitely better so you can go further. I would also ask if they'll show you the glowing cave. Apparently they don't show that to everyone, but it was awesome!
On Saturday morning we went golfing one last time, and while we were out there was a train on the bridge, so I took a picture for the kiddos.
Then on the way home we flew on a tiny plane from Hobbs to Denver, and then got off and walked to the next tiny plane over to fly from Denver to Idaho Falls. I took a picture of our original plane from the window of our second plane cuz I thought it was funny that we were right next door. We don't even get to have those tunnel things for these planes. We climb down steps outside and climb back up different steps outside! Someday maybe we'll live in a place that requires larger airplanes for travel! :)
Well, if you made it this far, congrats. I warned you it would be a total overload of info and photos. I'm a geek. I know. I'm REALLY glad I got to go on this trip. It was a much needed break from kiddos and normal life. I made some fun friends on my solo adventures, and I'm glad I got to hang with Andy in the afternoons and he got to go on a tour with me as well. It was a great week!
