June 27
We packed up to continue our journey to Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM. On the way out we tried to dump our completely full graywater tank. Unfortunately, the valve wouldn’t open. We thought it had broken. Great! Another disaster to deal with in the middle of nowhere. The lady at the campstore mentioned an RV repair place in Marathon, TX 90 miles away. At least we had to drive back out through there anyway. William crawled under the camper, opened up the underbelly, pushed aside the insulation and tried to diagnose the problem. All seemed to be in order. We continued driving, hauling all that extra water weight up and out of the park and to Marathon. The RV repair folks were very nice and accommodating, hooked up the sewer hose, pulled the valve cable, and….the tank started draining. Well, at least the valve functioned again. We concluded that old coffee grounds from washing out our french press somehow had prevented the valve from opening. The 90 miles of driving and sloshing had dislodged the debris. Problem solved, major crisis averted. While at the shop, several tiny kittens were running around and hiding under an old gas grill and AC unit. The RV repair men asked if we wanted any. Of course, as cute as these wild kittens were, we couldn’t take them with us. Our two cats, Tuuters and Sewey, back home are enough for now.
Behind schedule again, we would have to rearrange our plans at Carlsbad Caverns as we probably wouldn’t make the cutoff time for the last cavern entry at 3:30 pm. We drove through another truly ugly part of the country in northern Texas. Here there were lots of fracking towers dotting the dusty, scrubby landscape. Trucks associated with the fracking business made up almost all the traffic we saw. Across the plains one could see the dust clouds that were kicked up wherever the trucks drove on dirt roads to service the sites. The remains of hundreds of blown-out truck tires littered the edge of the road.
The drive into Carlsbad Cavern National Park, NM was a very pleasant contrast. The road winds through pretty canyons with lots of cacti and up to the top of a hill. After about 305 miles and 6 hours we arrived at the visitor center. Carlsbad Caverns was formed when an ancient, 400-mile-long limestone reef, buried by deposits of salt and gypsum, was uplifted and eroded. Rainwater seeped through cracks and faults and hydrogen sulfide-rich water migrated upward from huge gas and oil fields. The two waters mixed, forming sulfuric acid which dissolved the limestone and created huge chambers. Then over 500,000 years ago, the incredible cave formations were deposited drop by drop by mineral-rich water that seeped from the surface.
Carlsbad Caverns is famous not only for its incredible caverns, but for the large colony of migratory Brazilian (Mexican) free-tailed bats. Up to 400,000 of these bats live in a section of the caverns from around May-October, then migrate to Mexico for the winter. Every evening the colony streams in a counterclockwise fashion out of the natural cave entrance to feast on bugs in the southeastern river valleys. This bat flight can last 20 minutes to 2 ½ hours. Around dawn they return to the caverns.
At some point we realized that we had gained an hour with another time change, therefore we had automatically made up enough time to stick to our plan of taking a self-guided tour of the caverns. We got the free tickets for the 1.25 mile Natural Entrance Route which descends 750 ft into the Earth. At the end of this tour one can continue another 1.25 miles on the Big Room Route. Since we had been in another cave recently, we had to disinfect our camera and case because of White-nose Syndrome, a deadly fungus that infects bats and is spreading across the US. It originated in NY and has killed millions of bats. Our shoes had already been disinfected at Mammoth Cave when we had to walk on soapy cleaning mats.
As we began our decent through the natural entrance we saw the cave swallows which nest on the rocks inside the entrance and constantly fly around. Their smell was very unpleasant and almost overwhelming. The trail down rapidly became dark and steep and the smell disappeared. As we continued descending, we were in a constant state of disbelief. The scale of the caverns was mind-boggling! The rooms were huge. The trail kept on going steeply down, revealing yet more caverns. It never seemed to end. The formations throughout were truly incredible, and like the scale of the caverns, they were equally surreal. The word WOW (uttered frequently) can’t even remotely sum up this place. I would call it an absolute must-see! In terms of overall impressiveness, Mammoth Cave had nothing compared to Carlsbad Caverns. Unlike in Mammoth Cave, one could use flash photography, so we hoped for better pictures of this incredible place and its varied formations.
In the evening we found a seat at the amphitheater for the bat flight program. The amphitheater is arranged around the natural entrance to the caverns where the bats emerge. A ranger explained all about the bats as we waited for the first bat to fly out after about 45 minutes. Thousands of bats streamed. We stayed for about 30 minutes, watching the spectacle until it became too dark to see. Everyone had to be quiet. There were absolutely no electronics, cameras, phones, etc. allowed as the high-frequency noises and lights emitted can confuse the bats.
Instead of heading to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX 45 minutes southwest down the road for a campsite, we stayed at White City RV Park just outside Carlsbad Caverns NP. We pulled into the typical, unattractive, dusty, roadside commercial campground and went to sleep.
The Davids' Cross-Country Trip 