January 26-27, 2020 Carlsbad

We've been to Mammoth Caves, Wind Cave, Jewell Cave, Luray Caverns and several others, but Carlsbad is the biggest and best so far. Will Rogers called the cavern, "The Grand Canyon with a roof over it." We took the natural entrance trail to go down, same as last time, where you descend the equivalent of 75 stories in 1.25 miles. The trail down in the cavern is another 1.25 miles. It's BIG!

We were happy that, same as our last visit here, there were not throngs of people visiting. The darkness and quiet enhance the beauty of this place, that truly looks like God's art gallery. 

2 neat moments yesterday: After spending 4 hours exploring Carlsbad Caverns, we took a little-used (that day) 9.5 mile gravel auto-tour road. The sights along the road were typical NM desert and canyon walls. We stopped when we saw movement along the side of the road, about 20 yards away: a small herd of 12-15 mule deer, one buck surrounded by does and juvenile deer. They were on alert, but didn't run. We watched for a few minutes, and they all bounded

away when we moved.

The second moment occurred while walking to a restaurant (just a short distance from our motel) in the evening. We noted something really large and bright in the sky-- too big to be Venus, we thought. Google SkyMaps showed it was Neptune and Venus appearing together as one bright blob. You can see it too this evening!