Carlsbad Caverns

To visit the cave at Carlsbad Caverns National Park you need a timed entry ticket. We had gotten tickets for early afternoon. We got ours about a week in advance and it was filling up.

Donna didn’t want to do too much after yesterday’s long hike on Guadalupe Peak. In the morning, we went to the Living Desert State Park on the north side of Carlsbad.

The Living Desert State Park is really a zoo that exhibits animals that can’t be returned to the wild. It also has a nice selection of the native plants.

Donna had never seen a yucca this large.

They had many animals that you don’t get to see during the day in the desert as they are mostly active at night.

And some you would see if you came across them.

There were also some that were just visiting.

In the plant nursery, where they were propagating cactus, I saw this mouse. There was a volunteer working there and he hadn’t seen it, even though he had jut watered the plant it was hiding under. They have noticed nibbling on their cuttings, but hadn’t see what it was.

After lunch, we went to Carlsbad Caverns. We entered at 1:30pm. The last entrance time is 2:30pm. This works out to be a good time, you must exit by 4:30pm and many folks with kids want to go through pretty fast, so if you go slow, most folks after you will pass you and you will end up mostly by yourself.

We walked in the natural entrance and did the self guided tour. Ranger led tours of other parts of the cave were not being offered when we went.

It’s really hard to show the scale of these formations in a photo. The big cavern is the size of seven football fields.

After leaving the cave we drove the Walnut Canyon Desert Drive.

The drive covers this history of homesteading in the area. Homesteaders tried to graze goats in the area.

We saw this Agave Lechuguilla.