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Carls(great!) Caverns

                        In the middle of the New Mexico/Texas desert is a place that we’ve all heard of but I’m not sure how many of you have actually visited.

                                    Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

                                    If you’ve been here before then you may reminisce while you go along with your new classmates, who will now know why a trip to this wonder needs to be on their list.

                                    I will tease you with just one photo (to keep your interest) while your ‘Lesson’ is being administered.

Note ‘handrails’ for scale! (More incredible photos to follow, but no cheating and going down there! If you are viewing this on your phone, you may want to check it out again on your lap/desktop to get the full impact of the pics!)

                                    Ok, so lets go back to the way,way back (like 265 million years or so) and pretend we’re a couple of water molecules. We’re floating around in a big inland sea that some day will be a desert in New Mexico and Texas. We’re helping our friends Sponge Bob and his buddies form a reef of sponge-like critters, (No Patrick Star, Mr. Krabs, Squidward, or any others… just some spongy-type guys). Unfortunately Sponge Bob and his contemporaries croak. But they become the base for the next generation of Sponge Bobs. This goes on for several million years and it grows into a 400-mile long, horseshoe shaped reef along the coast of this big inland sea.

                        We’re going to jump ahead some more millions of years, add in some exciting activity from our old friend Mr. Plate Tectonics, who is going to get agitated, throw his chest out, and push this whole sea upwards to the point where its cut off from it’s parents to the west and now is on its own.

                        This process goes on for millions more years in varying stages, up, down, and sideways forming, unforming, fissures and cracks that let fresh rainwater, and the occasional salt water, penetrate downward through the old remains of Sponge Bob and his friends and relatives. When everybody gets together, the Sulfur Bullies meet the Hydrogen Happenings, sulfuric acid is made, bacteria start to feed, they croak and interact with limestone and eventually we get big caves that rise and fall with the varying sea levels until about 500,000 years ago, they start the process that we all know and love, Chemical Precipitation (dripping water).

                                                Drip, (with a molecule of Calcium)

                                                Drip, (with another molecule of Calcium)

                                                Drip, Drip, Drip,

                                                Pretty soon (thousands of years) we get these incredible formations, Stalactites ( t for top or hold tight) and their relatives the Stalagmites (g for ground or reaching up with all their m for might).

                                                There you have it.

Lots of Tights (tites) going on here!

                                                Class dismissed!

And we now get to go on our Field Trip (Yay!!!) but no snacks! (Boo!!!) Because they are not allowed down in the cave for fear of contamination.

You may eat your snack on the bus.

            The first aspect that I would like to relay to you is the scale of this experience. It is huge! I have occasionally had our resident Chief Spelunker, Paula the Fearless be strategically placed in a photo for scale. That, and you will notice the stainless-steel handrail in some photos. Look carefully for these items as they too add the much-needed scale for this encounter to be appreciated to its fullest extent.

We chose to walk down the 750 feet of elevation on the trail that is over a mile and quarter long. This depth (for comparison) is about 75% of the height of the Empire State Building.

                        We did not walk back up.

                        We did take the high-speed elevator.

It starts out here. This is the Bat Flight viewing area. Every night between late spring and early fall, the bats come swarming out at dusk to do what bats do. That dark spot down front is the mouth of the cave, It’s BIG!

When we finally reached the main attraction at the bottom, that of the aptly named Big Room, the path around that was another mile and a half!

            Now for all of you Jules Verne fans…. we will start our Journey to the Center of the Earth 😊

We’re about 50 feet down now, and you can see that our journey has just begun.
Down….
Down some more…
Into the “Dark Zone” Soon we’ll be where no sunlight has ever reached.
But first, we’ll look back up and see that last natural light coming in from the top left.
Down, down, down….
We start to see those nifty “Formations”.
Now we’re talkin’!
Check out those “Mites” down there. Wait til you see how big they are!
Handrails for scale.
Paula for scale.
Handrails
The colors are really pretty too!
Those white and orange hangy-down ones are just sheets of minerals, jagged ‘veils’ for lack of a better description.
More and more. Believe it or not, the incredible (after a while) became the norm and eventually it was the grand scale of it all that came to the forefront.
We’re finally down in the Big Room, ready to circumnavigate it. Please note the size of my two unknowing assistants standing center, left. Now get ready for our 1.5-mile trek around this 4000′ long by 605′ wide, by 250′ high “room”.

The next few photos may, or may not, have any text under them. Some need a comment, others just need someone to see them. That someone is you.

(Handrails on right)
(White jacket Paula on right) Note directly in front of her the long ‘Tite coming down and the thicker ‘Mite’ rising up.
Here they are a bit closer. Soon (?) they will form a ‘Column.’
Just a few….. (check the larger white formation, right, rear.)
Now flip back to it for the respective perspective!
I don’t know if they have an official name, but I call them the Cheshire Triplets. Just imagine these three guys with some appropriately placed eyes….. 🙂
Some more ‘veils’ or ‘ribbons’
The Crocodile Twins!
Ok… I couldn’t pass this one up. This is a photo of a formation of ‘snotltes’. I kid you not! (Go ahead, Google it, I’ll wait…..) When you are the first one to discover something, you get to name it. I guess they had a good time with this one! They are actually slimy strings of dripping sulfuric acidic microbes.
A pool of water, complete with the ripples from a single drop of water penetrating down from the surface, 750′ above us. There are no ‘springs’ down here, just the pools created by the drips.
This is actually small by comparison and is named the Children’s Theater. It is only about three feet high, but very pretty!
On the path, walking towards the center to get our elevator back to the real world!

I hope that you have enjoyed your tour of Carlsbad Caverns and can only wish that you may someday visit this incredible place. It is not at all claustrophobic as my lovely assistant, Paula the Fearless, can attest!

6 replies on “Carls(great!) Caverns”

Amazing pictures. It must be overwhelming to be surrounded by these formations. Of course now I have to go there.
My fifth grade teacher Mrs Reid gave us another way to remember stalagmites and stalactites. It is like ants in the pants; when the mites go up the tights come down.

WOW!!!!! I would love to see it in person some day. Thanks for the lessons and pictures.

Great photos!
John and I were in the Castellana Grotte caves in Italy last May and they would only allow photos in one area of the cave where there was a hole in the ceiling. Photos, were prohibited everywhere else within the grotte.

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