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Friday 1 February
How do we start to describe our day at Carlsbad Caverns? We know that whatever words we try to use they will not get across the amazing, wonderful and unforgettable sights that we have experienced today. We had been advised by various people over the last couple of weeks that we should go to the Caverns, being in the area, and we are so glad that we made the slight detour to our planned route to go to Carlsbad.
In the Chihuahuan Desert, Carlsbad Caverns isn't the longest cave in the world, it isn't the largest and it isn't the deepest but it definitely is overwhelming in it's immense size and overpowering beauty. It took us almost five hours to see the three main parts of the Caverns - the Natural Entrance (1 hour - 1 mile), the King's Palace (1.5 hours - 1 mile) and The Big Room (1.5 hours and 1 mile). Originally found in the early 1900s by Jim White, a local young cowboy, the Caverns were proclaimed a national monument in 1923, in 1930 a National Park and finally in 1995 a World Heritage Site.
The Caverns are home to thousands of Mexican Free Tailed bats, which fly to Mexico in the winter so we didn't get to see them. Incidentally, the Spanish word for bat is Murcialago, like the car made by Lamborghini. Guess that was the first "Bat Mobile". Thank goodness we didn't have to travel down into the Cavern or chasm as the early tourists did. They had to descend in an iron guano bucket. The bat guano was excavated and we mean EXCAVATED as, when the caverns were first discovered, the guano heaps were 40 feet thick. It was then sold for fertilizer.
Giant dome (cave roof) to bottomless pit is 370 feet. Bottomless pit is actually 140 feet deep so cave roof is 250 feet from where you are. Just immense, awesome and amazing will just have to be the words used!!
Back at White's city for the evening, we are just finishing dinner in the restaurant, the only people in the restaurant as it looks like there are not many other guests in the motel, and we overhear a guy at the Saloon bar telling the waitress how he saw two people on a bike this morning on the road to the Caves!! We went over to the guy and his wife to tell him we may have been that couple. It turned out that he meant a pushbike and not a motorbike but by now we have introduced ourselves and finding out all about Richard and Linda from Fort Thomas, Airzona, and visa versa. Richard looked like he had had a "full" life and told us he was a construction worker, the kind who work on girders without harness or support. He told us he was half Chactaw Indian and half Irish. Don't really know if this was true, as he was quite highly spirited by this time and just pretty much looked like a cowboy to us. So much like a cowboy that he had been offered the part of Doc Holliday at Tombstone - now that we could believe. What a laugh to end a great day!!
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