As a bear who plans to have an epic bear cave one day, I looked forward to visiting Carlsbad Caverns. It’s not the biggest or deepest cave out there, but it’s supposed to be cool and it’s along the way so off we went.
There are two options of exploring the caves - down the elevator, or taking the natural entrance walk. Of course we took the walk so I could check out the caves in more detail.
We paid $5 to get one of those audio tour wands. I thought it’d be worth it to hear more about what these caves are about. There are 50 recordings in total on our walk.
Aside from being a really big cave, Carlsbad is known for the millions of bats that fly out. Unfortunately those bats are all down in Mexico right now. It’s cold here. I don’t blame them. if they WERE around, here’s where you’d hang out to watch them fly. They’re supposed to start coming back next month.
Anyway, after a ranger gave us some dos and don’ts we went down through that entrance.
Oooooh. Caves. I like the size, but I want my cave a bit more high tech than this.
As we went down the path, it was pretty neat to see all the formations.
Of course we stopped to take pictures of ourselves too.
About an hour later, we got to the main Big Cave complex. It got a bit more crowded there but it was still cool to do the loop. They are still mapping out and exploring caves in this complex!
And then I got hungry. Since you’re not allowed any food inside the cavern to avoid luring animals in, we took the elevator back to the surface and went to look for food. Cool cave!
Turns out I didn’t need to stop in Roswell. There were aliens in White’s City as well.
And a bear for good measure.
White’s City, not Carlsbad, is the closest city to the Carlsbad Cavern. Carlsbad is actually 25 miles away. Though I don’t know if it’s technically a city. There’s not much there other than a motel, an RV park, a gas station, gift shop and a restaurant.
White’s City is named after Charlie White, not related to James White (the guy credited with exploring Carlsbad Caverns.) Charlie White was just some dude who moved from Kentucky to New Mexico to cure his tuberculosis, and decided there was an opportunity for money-making outside the Carlsbad Caverns. I guess that wasn’t worth much to his descendants, who put it up for auction a few years ago.
So we’re camping here for the night before going to Carlsbad Caverns the next day. And it’ll be my first time camping!
I’m excited!
Here’s our tent. We were only one of three campers.
Today, we hung out again with one of the men behind all that giant pulsed power machine (aka, almost like a laser). We got a tour thanks to Nicholas’ Uncle Frank. I love that my best bear bud knows a Laser Scientist. And today, Uncle Frank took us to try something else - New Mexican food.
For the most part, New Mexican food is a lot like Mexican food, but they’ve got a few specialties like sopapillas, which is a type of fried bread that you eat with honey. I liked eating it with a lot of honey. We went to a place called Monroe’s, and aside from Sopapillas, they served us chips and salsa for breakfast. Even better.
I just saw the big daddy of lightning canons. That’s not really a laser but it’s pretty darn close. My best bear bud and I got a private tour of the Pulse Powered Facility at the Kirkland Air ForceResearch Laboratory. The place looked right out of Tron. Here, I laid eyes on the Shiva Star. This thing is MASSIVE.
Imagine a machine capable of storing nearly 10 million joules of energy. And then being able to pulse 120,000 volts and 15 million amps in one millionth of a second towards an object. I don’t know what that means, but it sure sounds like a lot!
Anyway, any target of this machine stands no chance.
I got to feast my eyes on what little remained of a test cylinder, which was not much. The thing was compressed into almost nothingness.
I want this kind of power in my paws. I want Nicholas to make me my own Shiva Star. These guys are only using for research on how to achieve nuclear fusion. I’ve got so many better uses than that.
First stop, Joey’s. He and his wife Jill live in a very cute adobe house.
Immediate next stop - hotel room where I can get some much needed sleep to make up for the trauma of being forced to get up so darn early in the morning.
Last stop in the park was the Painted Desert, which is this massive expanse of stratified red stuff that covers several states. Supposedly it’s one of the more impressive features of the park but I was pretty worn out by the time we got here. So I took a look, tried to say hello to some Texans who gave blank stars back at me, then went back to the car.
I’m sure the place would have been more spectacular during sunset, but we had places to go and no time to dwadle!
