Day Four–Holy Batcave, Batman!

National Parks Annual Pass – $80

I had an alarm set for 7:00, but woke up at 6:00.  We’re in Mountain Time, now, so two hours earlier than Florida.  I let Aryn sleep until 7:00, then breakfast and the drive to the national park.

Once in the park, I pulled over at one of the scenic parking spots and we headed up the side of a hill.  Some huffing and puffing later, we arrived at the top, having successfully summited the smallest hill within view.

Then it was into the caverns.  I bought the Annual National Parks Pass for $80.  With all the parks we’re visiting on this trip, it should pay for itself.  Carlsbad alone would have been $12.  We took the natural entrance, rather than the elevator, a 750-foot elevation change over a 1-1/4 mile path.

At the bottom, before the loop of trail through the cavern, is a restroom and giftshop.  I like how they get you 750-feet down in a cave that’s 56-degrees and then charge $40 for a hoodie.  That’s good marketing sense.

Once at the bottom, we took the 1.2 mile loop around the the caverns.

So … a couple hours walk, listening to Aryn complain that she couldn’t go off the path and explore, especially the wire ladder in the last picture – which looks a bit deteriorated from when it was installed in the 20s.  I asked about the more strenuous tours of other caverns for her, but they only do those on weekends.  

We took the elevator back to the surface, 750-feet in one minute, which was cool because they have windows on it so you can see the raw rock of the shaft going past.  I still think we should have walked back up, as a test for the Grand Canyon.  Far better to find out here if it’s too much for the girl-child.

Hopefully, it won’t be too much for me.  The descent into the cavern aggravated my knee – climbing isn’t a problem, but going down gives some twinges.  I’m going to pick up a knee brace tomorrow and see if it helps.

We had lunch at the park, mine not very good, and then back to the hotel to rest and get out of the heat for a few hours.  At about 6:00, we have to head back to the caverns for the bat flight.

Aryn slept most of the afternoon and we left a little before six to go back to the caverns.  Browsed around the gift shops a bit before heading out to the amphitheater to sit on stone benches for two hours.  No noise, no electronics – it interferes with the bats.

That’s not a picture from tonight.  I’m not even sure that’s a picture of Carlsbad or the same species of bat at Carlsbad.  The picture’s from the National Park’s

website, but I think it’s a scam, because we didn’t see that many bats. Maybe it was because the crowd was too noisy, I don’t know.  It wasn’t a total waste, though, because we saw the Nike family:

Dad and the two little girls show up, all wearing Nike shirts, shorts and shoes (Aryn pointed out the shoes, which were dayglo).  Mom’s wearing UnderArmour – she must be the rebel of the family. They moved to the other side of the seating later and two older kids went with them, but the older kids weren’t wearing Nike.  They were actually dressed kind of ragged.  We decided they’re dad’s kids from his first marriage and don’t get the cool stuff.

Magic Underwear Update: Still running on two pair, no complaints.