Day 12 (Tuesday, July 6th) Carlsbad Caverns, NM

We watched the bats come out last night and it was an amazing experience. Today, we drove back up to Carlsbad Caverns and went inside. We started with a self-guided walking tour that begins at the Natural Entrance, where we'd watched the bats exit. We rented hand-held audio guides that supplied us with information at 50 points throughout the day. The guys are now old enough to have their own and enjoy the learning experience. By the time the public can enter the Natural Entrance, the bats are safely back in their portion of the cave, which isn't open to the public. The walk enters the mouth of the cave and the path folds back and forth, eventually dropping us to 750 ft. below the surface. The initial decent is incredibly steep but it levels off the deeper you get. It took us about 90 minutes to complete the mile-long Natural Entrance Route tour. Jake & Tyler (and us too) were in a permanent state of amazement.

When we finished that tour, we met up with a Park Ranger for a guided-tour of the "Kings Palace." This tour is also a mile long but it goes through areas not open to the public. The Ranger narrated the entire tour and we learned a great deal about the history of Carlsbad Caverns. Around every corner, there was something bigger, deeper, or more visually stunning. By the time the guided tour ended, the 56 degree temperature was finally getting to us, even through our jackets and long sleeves. We took the elevator (750 ft. up in 1 minute) to the visitor's center and drove back to the trailer for lunch. Holly was happy to see us.

Our campground was right at the entrance to the park so our drive was short. After lunch and a rest, we returned to the visitor's center, took the elevator back down and started our third tour of the caverns. The "Big Room" route was also a mile long and took us almost 2 hours to complete because we had to stop so many times to absorb the grandeur. Near the end of this tour, we finally entered the "Big Room." The Big Room is 8.2 acres of cavern with a roof over 150 ft. up. The colors and structures just can't be described and the pictures we took just don't do it justice. The sheer size of the space was truly mind boggling.

We finished our tour of the "Big Room" route just before they closed the visitor's center so we walked back down to the amphitheater to see the bat flight again. A Ranger spoke for about 45 minutes before the bats exited and answered just about every question anyone had about bats. Our evening finished with our seccond opportunity to watch a million bats swirl up out of the cave entrance like a living cyclone and depart like a dark river in the sky. This is something we'll all remember for the rest of our lives.

Tomorrow we head to Las Cruces, New Mexico where we'll visit White Sands Missle Museum and White Sands National Monument.