Anyone for some guano?

Sorry that my title is not so appetizing, but that was the word of the weekend for us when we visited Carlsbad Caverns. This is an important word which means bat poop.

These caves are pretty much as awesome as their reputation. I recommend it to anyone who likes caves. There are caves for all levels including some that require flashlights, hard hats, and crawling on your belly... We didn't do that one. We did the main entrance caves due to lack of time. We'd love to go back and do some others though so if anyone wants some company, let us know and we'll go back with you!

I am including some pictures that I think will be interesting to many of you who do not live here but have heard about New Mexico in the news so much lately.

After we left Roswell, we got to Carlsbad Caverns just in time to see the bats - I think around 7 if I remember right. (That's why you should blog/journal sooner than two months later.)

I took lots of pictures of the drive there and most did not turn out but I wanted to show the fire damage from back in... spring. I can't remember the months but I want to say February or March -ish. It was getting darker so these pictures are a little bit hard but you can see that everything is charred black and dead. Sad, huh?


Here is a picture of me walking down to the Natural Entrance of the cave to see the bats. The terrain in this picture was not burned so you can see a bit of how it should have looked everywhere.

Cool cave, huh? There's James. We had to take pictures before the bats came out because once the bats start coming, they make you turn off your cameras, cell phones, ipods and everything else electronic because they mess with the bats' sonar systems. Plus, they had police rangers there watching the audience ready to ticket anyone who took a picture... So, sadly, we do not have any pictures of the bats. But you can see them here: http://www.nps.gov/cave/planyourvisit/bat_flight_program.htm.

The rangers said they usually have between 100K and 400K bats living there each summer but this summer has been so dry that most of them left shortly after arriving this spring. So, I would guesstimate we only saw about 10K bats fly out, but that's still REALLY impressive!! I felt like Batman at parts.

After the bat flight program, we drove back to the town of Carlsbad and camped out in our tent in an off-the-highway kind of campground. Again, this is the driest year in recorded New Mexican history so there was very little grass in our spot to put our tent on and we both kept waking up scared someone was trying to get in our tent. I forgot to mention it was a super windy night... We still slept pretty well and woke up plenty early.

Here's a good daytime photo of the burned cacti. Sad, huh?

And here I am totally bummed to be hiking through a cave. Haha!

Looking down...

Looking up...

I can hardly contain my boredom...

Oh! This was a really cool formation they called the Whale or something similar because it looks like a whale of course.



And this is the Lion's Tail or something like that (again, I should have blogged this six weeks ago...)

Meet Ranger Heidi...

And Ranger James...

Yes, it was bright outside after being in a cave all morning.

And this is a cute store just before the cavern road that I appreciate. I LOVE when buildings are built or decorated with some character and not just for functionality. How bland to have a building that just functions and has nothing else to add to the local scenery or landscape. I like it!