Brian & Angela Anderson Family: Bat Flight and Carlsbad Caverns: Journey to the Center of the Earth

The next stop on our vacation was to Carlsbad Caverns in southern New Mexico. We arrived in Carlsbad in the late afternoon and headed down to the caverns to watch the nightly bat flight. Apparently during the summer months and into mid-Oct. there is a large colony of bats (over 1 million) that call Carlsbad Caverns their summer home. Every evening between 6 and 6:30pm they fly out for the night to find food and then they return to the cave at about 4:30am in the morning before the sun gets up. When you go to watch they have you sit in this area and while you wait for the bats they tell you lots of interesting things about them. You cannot use cameras or any kind of electronic equipment while you're down at the cave entrance so you don't scare off the bats (not even mp3 players or cell phones). They also want you to limit your movements and keep quiet when the bats come out. So we waited and tried to keep our boys quiet and calm (no small task let me tell you). Then our most energetic one, Lucas, had to have his diaper changed so Brian took him to the bathroom and when he got back the bats had started leaving the cave. The bats fly in circles at the top of the cave for a while and they leave in a long steady line, like a river. When we got back to the car we used our cameras. Here's a photo of the river of them (you'll have to click on the photo to see it).

We also took some video of them and were able to zoom in on them.

The next morning we went back to the cave to hike down 750 feet underground. From our views the night before we thought that the hike wouldn't take long sicne the cave didn't seem very deep. In reality it's a 1.25 mile hike as you do many switchbacks and see many formations. It took us an hour to get to the bottom. There is the option of taking an elevator down to the bottom (everyone must ride it back up to the surface), but if you go here DO NOT TAKE THE ELEVATOR unless you must. The views were just incredible. Brian rates this experience very high on his list of his favorite places to visit (it's right up there with Niagara Falls and that's saying something). Here's Brian and the boys before our decent. Lucas got to ride in a backpack that we borrowed from our friends (thanks Julia and Alex).

Here's a better view of the cave opening with Angela and Travis on a lower switchback.

This was taken just inside the cave. It's like 58 degrees in the cave and somewhat slippery on the paths. Good thing they installed hand rails.

This is a view of the bat cave that is far back in the photo. You don't hike into the bat cave, which is probably a good thing.

Here are some cave fingers called stalagmites. If you look closely at the large one, you can see the three heads of Lucas, Brian and Travis at the base. It gives you some idea of just how big the cave is and its features.

The cave is very interesting in how it goes from a large room down to a narrower pasageway. Here's Travis and Angela in one of the darker passageways.

At the bottom you see a view like this. At the bottom of the hike (which makes you feel like you must be in the center of the earth) there is a large room and there's another mile of walking around in it to see more formations.

There's also restrooms, picnic tables, and a place to purchase snacks and drinks. Here is Angela and the boys enjoying some snacks. Angela calls this an alien encounter photo since the light from the nearby souviner stand looks very different.

The next few photos give you a flavor of the various sights to see in the large cave.

Our little Lucas was happy pretty much the whole time. Towards the end of our walk through the large cave Brian noticed that he wasn't moving around much anymore. Sure enough Lucas had fallen asleep. Poor Lucas' head kept flapping around as Brian walked as there was no place to comfortably rest his head. He must have been very tired!