Tag Archives: caves

Carlsbad Caverns

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Anyway, after a ranger gave us some dos and don’ts we went down through that entrance.

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Oooooh.  Caves.  I like the size, but I want my cave a bit more high tech than this.

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As we went down the path, it was pretty neat to see all the formations.

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Of course we stopped to take pictures of ourselves too.

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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!

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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!

 

 

Into a war zone and then getting smoked out

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All I expected of my day was a little hiking action with my best bear bud.  We were heading out to these lava tube caves near Bend Oregon to have a little look-see, and then we were supposed to head back to the hotel for some hot cocoa and relaxation.

First sign that things weren’t going down the way I envisioned might have been the sound of gunshots reverberating through the area as we stepped out of the car.

For normal sane beings, “sound of gunshots” might have precipitated action to evacuate said  area.

Instead we walked towards the sound of guns.

Let me say that again, we walked towards the sound of guns.

We eventually ended up in front of this spot.  And since the sound seemed to come from the other side of the big hole of course we went down to investigate.

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On the far end of this giant pothole was a small hole.  Apparently it was the entrance to a large cave.  As we scrambled towards the hole we were hit in the face with a cloud of smoke.  And two kids popped out of that hole (left of the picture.)

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It smelled a little funky.  I didn’t recognize the smell but I started feeling a little funny.  My bear bud explained it was 4-2-0.  Like I know what that is.  It sounds like a brand of cleaner.

Anyway, the kids assured us that guns weren’t being fired in our direction, and actually it was a bunch more kids shooting from the cave out into the other side.

Finding that response satisfactory, we decided to take their word for it and crawl through the hole.  Maybe it was all our commotion, or maybe it was this 4-2-0 stuff, but we got through the cave to find the gun-wielders packing up and leaving.

Next thing I know we’re driving to some new location with a waterfall and we’re hanging over the precipice.

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And then I don’t remember what else.  Just that I didn’t get my hot cocoa.