Adventures of Grandma and Grandpa: Carlsbad Caverns

Today we made the tour of Carlsbad Caverns which is about 25 miles south of Carlsbad NM. If you have any interest in caves, this is the one to see. They have what they call the "Big Room" and it is really BIG. They say it is a 8.2 acre Big Room and could hold multiple football fields.
The way we did it was to do the self tour starting by entering at the natural entrance. This is the same entrance that all the thousands of bats fly in and out of at dusk and dawn. They migrate south to Mexico in the winter and are not back yet so we did not see them. We rented one of those tape machines that give you little messages at various numbered locations through out the cave. The guided tours were sold old for the next week because of activity from spring break. Our self guided tour worked fine. In total you travel on two 1 mile tours that takes about 2 1/2 hours total. We got there fairly early and were surprised to see how crowded the parking lot was when we got out. It was a good day to be in a 56 degree cave as it was cold and rain outside. Northern NM had alot of snow and having trouble as a result. No snow here. After the cave we drove past the Guadalupe Mountains which are south of the Caravans. To explore these mountains you need to do some long hikes and we were not ready for that so just stopped by the visitor center and headed on to Las Cruces NM where we are settled for the night. Tomorrow we will drive to Scottsdale to visit Al and Jean for a few days.