Carls... Pretty good, actually

 So far our journey has been dominated by ways to beat the heat and stay out of the sun. We didn't know much about Carlsbad Caverns, mostly that there was some sort of hole in the ground that we might be able to get into if we got lucky and paid a bunch of money. That and bats. So when we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised on all three fronts. 

After switch backing up a canyon wall to the visitor center, we ate some lunch in the shade. It was a glorious lunch of cream cheese, jam and bread. We ran into a guy from Boston who had just been to Petrified Forest and White Sands and was going to go to Guadalupe the next day -- the exact opposite of our plans! He warned us about the heat and joked that when we are retired we could do the same thing! We didn't have the heart to tell him we already are. 

When we headed inside to secure some cavern tickets we found it was actually quite simple and free! (Thanks America the Beautiful pass!) We took the elevator down 750 feet, passed through an air lock and spent the next 2+ hours wandering through the Big Room. We were entranced by the stalagmites and could not stop taking blurry pictures in the dark. Once we stumbled our way out of the darkness, we decided to walk the 750 feet (that we were reminded was the height of the empire state building) back up through the natural entrance since we missed it on the way down. But, on our way through the gate we were warned that they were closing the exit in 7 minutes and we had to be all the way out of the cave within the hour. So, we booked it. 

We missed looking at much of the cave and attractions in the 1.5 mile walk, as we ran up the winding switch backs to get out of the cave on time. Luckily it only took us 25 minutes and and our pride so nothing to worry about. 

In the evening we got to see the bat flight program. We we warned there might not be too many bats since they were still not all done migrating back to the cavern, but it was an amazing sight! They were a lot smaller than we expected and we learned a lot from the ranger about their experience in Carlsbad. 

We hope that after retirement we will also be able to travel around like the guy from Boston and all in all, Carlsbad Caverns is pretty good actually!