May 30th, 2019. Day 2 epic camping trip:
After a relatively short three hour drive we arrived at Carlsbad, NM by 10AM, which was a little early to check into our camp. We hit the town for a late breakfast at the Blue House Bakery and Café. The food was good and we were able to support a locally owned restaurant yet again. Win win.
This time we selected a KOA campground as our overnight option. It was the highest rated campground within 30 minutes of the caverns, which was our main reason for the stop. KOA’s tend to be a little pricey, but that is well worth it for the convenience. The good: Location, flat sites, dog walk areas, pool, bathhouse, and friendly staff. The bad: For some reason our GFCI kept popping on the trailer. I made a call to my most wonderful nephew, Philip Gerke, and he made a few suggestions. Once we arrived back at the camp, the GFCI was more stable, so we decided to leave it alone until we go to the next location. We did stop at the local Lowes and picked up a new GFCI just in case. The Ugly: Mosquitoes!!! They were huge and started swarming near dusk and continued throughout the night. Thank goodness we didn’t have any small bladder dogs with us! You can watch the following video for more information on the campground itself.
Carlsbad Caverns is the only caverns in the National Park system. It is also the only self-guided cavern I have ever experienced. Keith and I speculated even with a price hike to run guided tours it wouldn’t offset the number of rangers needed to handle the load, so they opted to allow people to hike at their own risk. The caves are not in pristine condition, likely due to this hard choice of allowing people free reign. Still, it was interesting to practically hike alone for miles underground. I found it very appealing.
There are two options for self-guided tours. Option 1: Take the elevator down and hike the 2 mile flat area called the Big Room or Option 2: Hike 1.5 miles down then hike the 2 mile Big Room and take the elevators up. Kenzie is our adventurer and she voted for the full 3.5 mile hike, so that’s what we did. It was really fun and because it was 95% downhill, much easier than hiking up to the Hollywood sign!
With Keith being active duty, we were given our annual National Park Pass free of charge. Another great benefit for our time in the military. This made the entire experience free. The caverns were very much worth seeing. We enjoyed the hike and the kids will be describing what they learned in the journal I am forcing them to keep during this journey. A well loved stop on our two months of camping fun!
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