Almost Spelunking...

This is gonna be a long post.  I took a cubic buttload of photos and it was hard to pare them down to a few favorites.  So you're getting a bunch and they're mostly not in any particular order.

Today I visited Carlsbad Caverns, which is tied for my second favorite National Park along with The Grand Canyon.  In case you're wondering The Petrified Forrest is the first and Acadia has been bumped down to third (after spending 20+ years in first).  Carlsbad is kind of like the underground Grand Canyon...

I didn't start out so early today and lost an hour because I crossed back into Central time.  It was a long trip through a lot of desert, but broken up by a drive over a very large mountain.  Some of the views were very pretty

I did stop and take a photo of the mountains of Guadalupe Mountain National Park.

About a half hour later I was at Carlsbad Caverns.  I decided to do the walk down into the natural entrance rather than take the elevator.  It was a freaking workout, but there is a lot of cool stuff along that walk, so an hour straight down into Hell I went...

Fair warning...

And that's the way down

 WAY down..

The last glimpse of sunlight before you are completely underground. The trail in is about a mile and a quarter long and is fine once you get past the smell of bat guano.  Visitors cannot go into the bat cave, but you can sure smell it.

It's impossible to convey the scope and size of the caverns.  And I was only in two parts of them, the Natural Entrance and the Big Room.  The Big Room hike is another mile and a quarter, so it was a big day for Donna.  I'm just gonna toss some photos at you, in no particular order.  I'll try to caption a few. Enjoy!

This one is called the Bone Room because the rock formations look like bones (no real bones here).

Yes, this one looks like a boob...it's been pointed out.

The above few photos are of stalactite formations called "chandeliers."

The above couple of pics are of a section called the "Hall of Giants"

This is an old cable ladder used by early explorers.

This is Mirror Lake (for obvious reasons)

This one is called "The Rock of Ages"

A close-up of the Rock

I'm pretty sure this one is called "The Totem Pole"

One of only a couple of photos I took with a flash, "The Whale's Mouth."

My camera battery started dying about halfway through The Big Room, so I used my phone for a backup.  Weirdly enough, a camera phone worked better.  I didn't have a tripod, so getting clear photos in low light with a camera was tough.   I did have to do a selfie using the blind side of the phone so that I could do a flash photo.

Luckily, there is an elevator to the surface and I didn't have to haul my tired ass out of there on foot. 

I hit the gift shop and went to the restaurant, where I got some decent tacos and black beans.  I then hit the road into town to get gas and got the heck outta dodge.  I really did not want to drive those mountain roads after dark.  I wasn't too keen on driving through the desert in the dark either. 

I didn't spend too much time in the dark desert, but it was definitely night when I got back to the apartment. 

I am seriously thinking of crossing Guadalupe Mountains off the list.  I need a day off tomorrow from driving all over creation.  I may try the wineries again...we shall see...