Upon arriving in El Paso, Texas, I was subjected to a three hour drive to Carlsbad. This was my first trip to the Southwest and what a shock it was. I was struck by was the lack of trees and flabbergasted by the amount of wide open space. I had really never experienced anything like it. As the afternoon wore on I became dazzled by the muted and pleasing colors the desert offered. Between the almost unnatural greens of the grass and plant life, the multi-colored sand and dirt, and the ever-changing sky I was speechless. Now I understand why Georgia O'Keeffe loved this part of the country so much.

Carlsbad Caverns offers a wide variety of tours. I would even recommend spending more than one day in the area to take full advantage of this natural wonder. There are also many things to do in this National Park outside the cavern. Whites City is at the base of the park and has all the amenities a traveler would need including the mysterious "Million Dollar Museum". The caverns' natural entrance for the self guided tour is quite steep and strenuous. It stretches from the surface down to the heart of the cave. Sadly we did not have enough time or energy to take advantage of this. We started with the big room tour, which is the easiest and quickest of the self-guided cave tours. It is a one-mile walk around the outside of the largest room in the cavern. I had never seen anything like this before and I don't suspect I ever will again. To enter the cave you take an elevator straight down about 750 feet. Once inside, the temperature is a comfortable 58 degrees. The self-guided tour is along a path that has handrails. You cannot stray from the path but it passes close to all the most beautiful formations. This underground land is a bit like taking a trip to a Science Fiction movie set or maybe even another planet. The room itself is so large that at one point on the tour you pass a hole in the ground where a 37-story skyscraper could be built under the cavern ceiling!

After the walk around the cave we decided a guided tour would be even better. The Kings Palace tour is given daily with up to 75 guests. Thankfully ours was the last tour of the night and only 15 people came along. This gave the park ranger an opportunity to stop in places she didn't typically stop. The greatest feature of this tour is the history. A man named Jim White "discovered" the Caverns as a young teenager around 1898. He was the modern explorer who helped to make the area a national park. For his entire life he traveled the caves and eventually became the park's first ranger. From 1903 till 1923 the bat cave was the host to a guano mining operation. It was declared a national monument in 1923, which halted the mining operation. In 1930, the area was congressionally named Carlsbad Caverns National Park. The marks of early visitors can be seen on the Kings Palace tour. Initials and dates were inscribed on the walls with lantern soot. It is hard to believe that with such primitive equipment people over a hundred years ago could safely make their way into and out of the deepest recesses of the caves. The largest room on this part of the tour was used in the movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth". The park was so angry with the damage that the film crew inflicted that now movie crews must remain on the designated paths at all time. Needless to say not many sequences are filmed in the caverns today. (Personally, I think this would be a great vacation spot for a Simpsons episode.) One fantastic feature of this tour is the lights out portion. Around forty-five minutes into the tour the ranger turns out the light and you get to experience the cave in its natural state. I don't think I have ever been any place that dark, not even the back room at the old Bank nightclub. Because we were on the last tour of the day all the lights behind us needed to be turned off. Our group opted to do the final walk out with just flashlights making the end of the tour a great experience.

Every night during the season, the bat flight program is offered. The event is calculated according to when the sun sets. Around an hour before dusk the crowd begins to congregate in the amphitheater at the cave entrance. This stone structure holds around one thousand people; on peak weekends, it is packed. The designated time on our trip was 6:30 pm, so we staked out the best spot in the house, high up on the hill. A ranger gives a talk about bats until the flight begins each night. Our park ranger spoke about the dangers of pesticides as well as the myths surrounding bats. The Carlsbad breed is the Mexican Free Tailed Bat. An estimated 300,000 live inside its cavern walls. This is a breeding colony and in late August, the babies begin to fly. At one point in the 1990's the colony numbered in the millions. The numbers have dwindled significantly as have colony numbers all over the world because of human interference. The animal killer DDT is still in use in Mexico, where the bats reside in the winter time. Habitats are becoming harder to find as current roosts are destroyed. The rangers sell adopt a bat packets for $5 to benefit the animals.

When the bats begin to fly, it is magical. As the sun began to set, the sky exploded in color. The clouds behind us grew dark and the smell of the rain threatened the air with its pungent and almost sour scent. The clouds passed with only a few drops of water and the reds of the sunset returned. At 7:15 pm, the bats began swirling around within the cave entrance. (They fly out in a clockwise motion in North America and it is counter clockwise in the Southern hemisphere.) The bats come out in large groups and fly off together. Some even fly over the audience, which was quite a thrill. The audible sound of of so many wings beating together was amazing. They also emit a musky scent. We watched the bat exodus until after the sun had completely set and it was too dark to see.

Visiting Carlsbad Caverns and the bats was one of the best vacations I have ever had. I recommend this to anyone who loves natural wonders. I am glad the opportunity presented itself to me because it broadened my horizons once again. I love learning new things and travel; it is a great day when I can combine them both.