Another Day in Paradise

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Correction from yesterday’s post – the fox/coyote that we saw yesterday was in fact a Kit Fox – confirmed by a ranger at the Visitor Centre.

Small World Fact – When we went into the campground office the other day we took a look at the brochure selection of local attractions.  Most campgrounds have something like this.  There was one that was oddly, out of place – it was a brochure for Snow Lake, Manitoba.  I don’t know how it got there but there were quite a few of them.  Very odd.

We returned to the Carlsbad Caverns for another shot of wonderment.  We took the ranger guided tour to a restricted area of the caverns called the King’s Palace – and indeed it was fit for a king.  It is customary in caves to name most of rooms, tunnels, passages and decorations with descriptive names such as the bashful elephant, Rock of Ages and the Boneyard.  There are usually several references to the Devil – Devils Den and Devils Spring.  And seemingly there is always at least one Bottomless Pit in each cave.  Along with the King’s Palace we saw the Queens Chamber, Green Lake Room and Iceberg Rock, a huge rock that fell from the ceiling many thousands of years ago…the size of a school gymnasium.  Fortunately, as the ranger said today, “Most of the rocks only fall at night.”  And they are typically very securely attached to the ceiling.

  The original movie, “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”, with Pat Boone was partially shot in this area of the Caverns.  The King’s Palace floor had been cleared of most of the decoration for this movie shoot leaving it unusually flat and without character.  The Park Service would never allow this to happen today. In the King’s Palace we were seated on stone benches while the Ranger talked about the decorations and caving.  With everyone’s agreement she turned off all the lights.  It was the most profound darkness that I had ever known, but it wasn’t at all uncomfortable as the Ranger continued talking during the 5 or 10 minutes of darkness – you sort of lose track of time.  We later asked our Ranger, Kirsten what she liked about her job.  She replied that she worked in a beautiful Office.  The tour ended back at the underground rest area; we had been gone over two hours.  Janet and I, still had some energy left so we decided to re-do the Big Room from yesterday.  Our intent was to just breeze through it…the Lewis’s never rush through anything.  Even the old people were passing us.  After another two hours, we were finally headed back to the surface.

We went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things and we were back to the trailer by about 5:00 PM.  We are headed to Lubbock, Texas tomorrow to see another museum…we need a museum fix.  We’ll post soon.